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MADRID – Every year following Spain’s Goya Awards ceremony, producers re-release winning films, looking to squeeze a few more dollars out of the domestic market in theaters. But this year, faced with dismal 2013 movie attendance, distributors are giving the re-releases an extra push, bringing back out more copies than usual in hopes of getting a much needed awards season revenue boost.
David Trueba’s Living is Easy with Eyes Closed — which won top honors of best film and best director — is back in theaters with 60 copies this week, following Sunday’s awards ceremony. The re-release is just shy of half the original 131 copies put out during the original release, which earned €700,000 ($955,000), according to Rentrak.
STORY: Spain’s Box Office Sales Drop 15 Percent in 2013
Fernando Franco’s Wounded, which won best new director and best lead actress, is also back in theaters with 23 copies, just four less than its original debut, which earned a mere €130,650 ($178,000), way under the €1 million budget ($1.36 million).
History shows the Goyas do have a direct effect on the financial success of a film.
When Agusti Villaronga won best film in 2011 with the Catalan-language Black Bread, the film had earned €830,000 ($1.13 million) in 14 weeks in theaters. The film was re-released just before the Goyas with 30 copies and earned a total of € 2.7 million ($3.7 million).
“The big problem with our industry is that no one hears about our films. The budgets are so tight in the smaller films that there is barely any money for promotion,” Villaronga told the Spanish daily El Pais Wednesday.
STORY: ‘Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed’ Tops Spain’s Goya Awards
Jaime Rosales’ Solitary Fragments, which had only earned €228,000 ($380,000) by the day of the awards ceremony in 2008, sold some 80,000 tickets off of 29 copies following the ceremony, to close its theatrical run with €670,000 ($914,000).
Last year’s Goya landslide winner Snow White by Pablo Berger rose from €926,748 ($1.2 million) to €1,3 million ($1.7 million) in re-release.
Total Spanish box office sales plunged a startling 15 percent in 2013, marking a new low, thanks largely to rampant piracy, a suffocating financial crisis with some 23 percent unemployment and a 21 percent sales tax on movie tickets.
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