Fack Ju Göhte spinoff Chantal in Fairyland (Chantal im Märchenland) capitalized on its strong start in Germany last Thursday, turning in a weekend performance for the record books. With $6.2M through Sunday, the time travel adventure from Constantin Film scored the best Easter opening frame ever for a German movie in the home market, as well as the best overall launch for a local title since Chantal filmmaker Bora Dağtekin’s 2019 comedy The Perfect Secret.
In total, the Thursday-Sunday session sold nearly 580K tickets with a 37% share of the market. Including previews and the strong Easter Monday holiday, admissions are at 815K through yesterday for nearly €8.3M ($8.9M) which puts Chantal in line with Barbie at the same point in release. Factoring in numbers from Austria and Switzerland, the movie has clocked a little over 930K admissions.
Written and directed by the Göhte franchise’s Dağtekin, Chantal in Fairyland plays around with movie princess tropes and gives the world of fairy tales a contemporary twist. Jella Haase stars as Chantal who, with her best friend Zeynep (Gizem Emre), is transported to a fairytale land through an antique magic mirror, which they think is a social media gimmick. This thrills Chantal, an eternal influencer with no followers who sees it as an opportunity to generate unique content.
But as Chantal searches for her way back home, she realizes that in the realm of dragons, fairies and other characters, many things are different from what we know from the stories of the Brothers Grimm.
The Fack Ju Göhte films (aka Suck Me Shakespeer) released in 2013, 2015 and 2017. They were huge hits in German-speaking Europe, taking more than $225M collectively across the continent.
Chantal in Fairyland is produced by Lena Schoemann and executive produced by Oliver Berben and Martin Moszkowicz.