In its first two weeks in cinemas, City Boys: Golden Boyz / Băieți de oraș: Golden Boyz had 376,659 admissions and cashed in 2.41 m EUR /12,282,760 RON, according to Cinemagia.
Directed by popular comedian Mihai Bendeac and distributed on an impressive number of screens, 156, by Vertical Entertainment, the film is a remake of the comedy TV series City Boys / Băieți de oraș, which aired on Antena 1 channel in 2016 - 2018, written by Mihai Bendeac and directed by Dan Petcan. In its opening weekend, the film had 194,052 admissions and 1.33 m EUR / 6,825,575 RON gross.
Love at the Countryside / Dragoste la țară, directed by Gabriel Radu, produced and distributed by Vidra Productions, has 426,575 admissions and 2.63 m EUR / 13,432,652 RON gross in seven weeks, after gathering 161,265 admissions and 1.11 m EUR / 5,675,236 RON during its first week.
The overall Top Ten also includes, in 4th spot, another domestic comedy, A Criminal Weekend / Un weekend criminal directed by Cătălin Dascalu, produced by Mixton Movie.
Jesús del Cero’s Miami Bici, produced by Watchme Productions and released by Vertical Entertainment, was the Romanian comedy that opened a trend now in its 6th year. In 2022, the film topped the overall charts with 553,635 admissions and 2.28 m EUR / 11,633,276 RON gross.
Teambuilding, which finished 2022 in the second position, after Avatar: The Way of Water, had slightly better results than City Boys: Golden Boyz during its opening weekend: 196,737 admissions. Directed by Matei Dima, Cosmin Nedelcu, and Alex Cotet, Teambuilding was produced by a company that since then has become a factory of Romanian comedy hits, Vidra Film Productions.
In 2023, Vidra’s Miami Bici 2 (coproduced with WatchMe) established a new record for an opening weekend with 198,324 admissions, a record shattered in 2024 by Vidra’s Buzz House: The Movie by Florin Babei, which had 249,015 admissions in its first weekend.
Although disliked by educated audiences, those new Romanian comedies are now a gold mine for distributors. Beside Vertical Entertainment (who usually releases Warner Bros. titles), other major outlets such as Forum Film (The Walt Disney Company, 20th Century Studios). and lately, Ro Image 2000 (Paramount, Universal, Prorom) are now keen on releasing Romanian comedies.
