Marsupilami, Gourou and Bojarski exceed one million at the French box office

Philippe Lacheau’s comedy gets off to an excellent start, while Pierre Niney goes the distance, just like Reda Kateb…

Three French films have already exceeded the million admissions mark in 2026.

Philippe Lacheau gets off to a thunderous start with Marsupilami. The comedy attracted more than a million spectators in 673 theaters during its first week. This is obviously the best launch of the year, but also the best launch of a French film since Asterix and Obelix: The Middle Kingdom (1.8 million at the time). With previews, the film by Jamel Debbouze has already sold nearly 1.4 million tickets, an excellent score, slightly lower than that of Alain Chabat’s film. On the Marsupilami trail (1.7 million in 2012).

It is also the best start to Philippe Lacheau’s career as a director, ahead of Alibi.com (1.1 million after one week in 2017). His final record remains Alibi.com 2which had totaled 4.2 million admissions in France in 2023. Marsupilami looks set to beat him.

In the meantime, the little yellow and black creature takes first place at the French box office and is ahead of Guru by Yann Gozlan. Down 35%, the societal thriller remains a great success: Guru has already reached, in just two weeks, the final level of Black box (2022) with almost 1.2 million spectators so far. The thriller carried by Pierre Niney is the other big French success at the start of 2026, even if the Marsupilami will end up devouring this Guru in the coming weeks.

Another great success (more unexpected this one) in a year which is off to a good start for French cinema: The Bozharsky Affair by Jean-Paul Salomé continues to run at full speed. If attendance fell by 31%, the historical thriller carried by Reda Kateb also crossed the threshold of one million cumulative admissions after four weeks, becoming the second biggest success of the filmmaker’s career, just behind his adaptation of Belphegor (2 million in 2001).

In the rest of the week’s box office, only one other new release enters the top 10 in France: Return to Silent Hill by Christophe Gans is off to a sluggish start with barely 100,000 spectators in nearly 300 cinemas. The average per room is low. The first silent Hill de Gans (2006) started at 400,000 admissions and ended at 800,000. We can already guess that the sequel will not do as well.

Finally, boosted by the Oscar nominations, Hamnet maintains good attendance, with a drop limited to 16% and nearly 350,000 entries in France after three weeks.