Publications
Partners
Love story with SA stars and a Ghanaian hunk surpasses dreary apartheid tales
A woman on a date tends to choose what movie the couple will watch – and the man will happily agree, if it means impressing her.
This has had a good bit to do with the runaway success of the local romantic drama Happiness Is a Four-letter Word, reckons one of the producers.
Happiness is doing so well at the local box office that it looks set to overtake celluloid king Leon Schuster’s last movie and set a new record for an independent black film.
Starring a gorgeous cast – Khanyi Mbau, Renate Stuurman, Mmabatho Montsho and Chris Attoh – Happiness is also going international, starting with a theatrical release in Nigeria.
According to Box Office Mojo, Happiness has already grossed R12.5 million at the box office. Still in cinemas throughout the country, it has a shot at overtaking the R17.5 million grossed by Schuster’s Schuks! ... Pay Back the Money!, SA’s biggest movie last year.
“Our main audience is urban women, but what has really worked in the film’s favour is that when men have gone into the cinema, they have really enjoyed the film,” says Helena Spring, who produced Happiness with Bongiwe Selane and Junaid Ahmed.
It is still the top-ranked South African film at the box office, more than eight weeks after its release, which is exactly what the producers intended.
“It opened in something like 54 cinemas. After the opening weekend results, Ster-Kinekor added another six,” Spring told City Press this week. Because of its success, Happiness is still showing in 25 cinemas throughout the country.
It’s particularly big in urban centres – in the Maponya Mall, Rosebank, Sandton and Southgate in Joburg; Menlyn and Sterland in Pretoria; and Suncoast in Durban – but is also doing well in cinemas in places such as Kempton Park and East London.
Social media has been buzzing with updates on the movie, which depicts a thoroughly modern African universe, and has proven once and for all that Mbau has the kind of star quality that can carry a film.
But Spring points out that all the female leads are audience pullers – and that the men in the movie should not be discounted.
“Sexy men have been a good part of the appeal,” she says. “Ghanaian hunk Chris Attoh is a huge star across Africa and his role as a love interest in the film is quite likely to have helped pique interest across the continent,” says Spring. “I can tell you that we are in very advanced negotiations for a theatrical release in Nigeria,” Spring revealed.
She says that international distribution interest is high and she expects other global releases before the film goes to DVD, TV and pay-per-view release in South Africa in July.
It seems that love is a big draw card at local box offices previously dominated by bleak tales of apartheid and then gangster flicks.
Akin Omotoso’s 2015 romcom, Tell Me Sweet Something, did well at the box office, but the director waged a fight with Ster-Kinekor to keep it showing because of audience demand. It certainly helped break ground for Happiness.
But love is not everything.
The Happiness producers’ last film, Hard to Get, was a gun-toting, car-chasing action romance and their next is a Durban Indian comedy – Keeping Up with the Kandasamys – all triggered by slate funding from the National Film and Video Foundation. While Afrikaans film goes from strength to strength, the foundation and local producers have been desperate to improve the commercial success of black films.
It seems that genre movies are the answer – but that they have the best shot if they are produced in English without subtitles if they hope to travel internationally.
