I come a bit after the battle but I'm going to try to give you France's side of things. Sort of. I can't pretend it's going to be a bird's nest view.
I'll begin with the box-office here.
The first week (it was released 6th May), it made 433.725 entries, which is pretty good for France. Wolverine was released the week before and it was at 488.032 entries. It's important to note that STXI had much better critiques (both from the "average" audience and from professionals) than Wolverine here. STXI could have progressed much more but Angels and Demons was released the week after.
So by the end of its second week, STXI was at 634.538, Wolverine at 1.703.632 (after three weeks) and Angels and Demons at 805.694 after only one week of showing. So yeah, the numbers speak for themselves.
BUT there are other numbers which are very interesting, and that's the number of copies. The more copies are distributed in a country, the more there are theatres showing the movie.
-STXI: 480 copies
-Wolverine: 659 copies
-Angels and Demons: 758 copies
Note the almost ridiculous number of copies for STXI compared to the two other blockbusters!
There's a French movie, rather confidential, which was released during the same period with 459 copies
That sucks, to say the least. Either you can say that they didn't distribute a lot of copies because they knew that there wasn't going to be a big audience in France, either there wasn't that big an audience in France because there wasn't enough copies, ie enough theatres showing the movie.
I won't even talk about IMAX. IMAX is a urban legend were I live
There was a promo on TV, in magazines… much, much more than for the previous Trek movies.
I live in a 40.000 inhabitants town (rather small, I grant you), there is one theatre with 4 screens. I've been living there for 21 years and STXI is the only ST movie they ever showed! Only this fact is telling about STXI's reputation.
I went to the very first showing (in the afternoon. I've always attended the showings in afternoon) and we were…two. In a place with 350 seats. Oops. Went again the week after, we were 7/8 in a place with…70 seats. They had moved the movie to a smaller place because it mustn't have been doing very well. The two last times I went, we were something like 10 in a 85 seats place (again, they had moved the movie).
The theatre is no longer showing the movie, after only 2 weeks. I've seen it 4 times
You know what? On its first afternoon showing, The Phantom Menace was packed full. Much ore than 350 seats were sold as they had to tell to a lot of people to go to the next showing.
Star Trek has a nerdy image in France and while it's in popular culture (generally people more or less know what you are talking about when you say "Star Trek", and they do know Mr Spock and his pointed ears), its universe isn't very well known. Blame the TV for that.
TOS was first aired on mainstream TV in…1982 (French dubbed)
It was aired again on mainstream TV 10 years after. After that, nada. That was the end of ST on mainstream TV.
TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT were aired on a channel which was part of a satellite group of channels you had to pay for, and it was rather expensive.
I got to see TNG and DS9 because I bought the DVDs. The nice looking boxes cost me a total of 350 bucks. Yep. I really love ST!
Meanwhile, you have a show like Stargate (and also Atlantis) that's been aired on mainstream TV and in prime time, since its beginnings. With good audiences. I've spoken about that with lots of people, be it among my friends or at work and it seems that Stargate doesn't have the nerdy image ST has. Still, shows like BSG, Firefly, Babylon 5, Farscape and so on were never aired on mainstream TV. Apart from the BSG pilot. Then, we've never heard about it again
There seems to be a problem here with science-fiction and as I'm not a sociologist, I can't really explain why.
You should see the way people look at me when I wear a ST tee-shirt (when they recognize what it's about, anyway)
From the conversations I overheard around me, the few audience I had with me in the theatre at my viewings wasn't from the fanbase, except from a teenager and a 60 years old woman. The others were here to watch a movie with spaceships, explosions and battles.
A lot of the stuff in the movie must have gone way over their heads but they seem to have really enjoyed the movie anyway.
I haven't seen ENT and when Spock spoke about a "katric arc" in the movie, I was like "Uh????"
I thought that there was a mistake in the French translation! So you see, I'm supposed to be a fan and there were references I couldn't grasp.
I'm not saying it's a big problem because as I said, the non-fan audience seemed to have a great time. But there's a problem with easily accessing to anything ST in France, especially if you don't speak English at all. The countdowns books have yet to be translated in French, for instance (the novelization is though, which is nicely surprising).
My two cents about all this. Sorry for the too long post no doubt full of typos and grammar mistakes.
I'll begin with the box-office here.
The first week (it was released 6th May), it made 433.725 entries, which is pretty good for France. Wolverine was released the week before and it was at 488.032 entries. It's important to note that STXI had much better critiques (both from the "average" audience and from professionals) than Wolverine here. STXI could have progressed much more but Angels and Demons was released the week after.
So by the end of its second week, STXI was at 634.538, Wolverine at 1.703.632 (after three weeks) and Angels and Demons at 805.694 after only one week of showing. So yeah, the numbers speak for themselves.
BUT there are other numbers which are very interesting, and that's the number of copies. The more copies are distributed in a country, the more there are theatres showing the movie.
-STXI: 480 copies
-Wolverine: 659 copies
-Angels and Demons: 758 copies
Note the almost ridiculous number of copies for STXI compared to the two other blockbusters!
There's a French movie, rather confidential, which was released during the same period with 459 copies
That sucks, to say the least. Either you can say that they didn't distribute a lot of copies because they knew that there wasn't going to be a big audience in France, either there wasn't that big an audience in France because there wasn't enough copies, ie enough theatres showing the movie.
I won't even talk about IMAX. IMAX is a urban legend were I live
There was a promo on TV, in magazines… much, much more than for the previous Trek movies.
I live in a 40.000 inhabitants town (rather small, I grant you), there is one theatre with 4 screens. I've been living there for 21 years and STXI is the only ST movie they ever showed! Only this fact is telling about STXI's reputation.
I went to the very first showing (in the afternoon. I've always attended the showings in afternoon) and we were…two. In a place with 350 seats. Oops. Went again the week after, we were 7/8 in a place with…70 seats. They had moved the movie to a smaller place because it mustn't have been doing very well. The two last times I went, we were something like 10 in a 85 seats place (again, they had moved the movie).
The theatre is no longer showing the movie, after only 2 weeks. I've seen it 4 times
You know what? On its first afternoon showing, The Phantom Menace was packed full. Much ore than 350 seats were sold as they had to tell to a lot of people to go to the next showing.
Star Trek has a nerdy image in France and while it's in popular culture (generally people more or less know what you are talking about when you say "Star Trek", and they do know Mr Spock and his pointed ears), its universe isn't very well known. Blame the TV for that.
TOS was first aired on mainstream TV in…1982 (French dubbed)
It was aired again on mainstream TV 10 years after. After that, nada. That was the end of ST on mainstream TV.TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT were aired on a channel which was part of a satellite group of channels you had to pay for, and it was rather expensive.
I got to see TNG and DS9 because I bought the DVDs. The nice looking boxes cost me a total of 350 bucks. Yep. I really love ST!
Meanwhile, you have a show like Stargate (and also Atlantis) that's been aired on mainstream TV and in prime time, since its beginnings. With good audiences. I've spoken about that with lots of people, be it among my friends or at work and it seems that Stargate doesn't have the nerdy image ST has. Still, shows like BSG, Firefly, Babylon 5, Farscape and so on were never aired on mainstream TV. Apart from the BSG pilot. Then, we've never heard about it again
There seems to be a problem here with science-fiction and as I'm not a sociologist, I can't really explain why.
You should see the way people look at me when I wear a ST tee-shirt (when they recognize what it's about, anyway)
From the conversations I overheard around me, the few audience I had with me in the theatre at my viewings wasn't from the fanbase, except from a teenager and a 60 years old woman. The others were here to watch a movie with spaceships, explosions and battles.
A lot of the stuff in the movie must have gone way over their heads but they seem to have really enjoyed the movie anyway.
I haven't seen ENT and when Spock spoke about a "katric arc" in the movie, I was like "Uh????"
I thought that there was a mistake in the French translation! So you see, I'm supposed to be a fan and there were references I couldn't grasp.I'm not saying it's a big problem because as I said, the non-fan audience seemed to have a great time. But there's a problem with easily accessing to anything ST in France, especially if you don't speak English at all. The countdowns books have yet to be translated in French, for instance (the novelization is though, which is nicely surprising).
My two cents about all this. Sorry for the too long post no doubt full of typos and grammar mistakes.
Wait, I had the biggest crush on Spock, like, finding him very sexy and I was only 10?! 
