CIS cinemas saw the debut of Chris Carter’s X-Files: I Want to Believe, the continuation of the first X-Files theatrical film from 1998, which, in turn, is based on Carter’s eðonymous 1993–2002 TV series. The sequel, starring the familiar duo of David Duchovny as Agent Fox Mulder and Gillian Anderson as Dana Scully achieved fully respectable results – $2,443,539 in its first four days from 553 screens and the top spot in the box office chart. In terms of average gross per screen, the results were not very high – $4,419 – but still this was the best gross among the films of the week. The first X-Files film, which Gemini distributed in 1998, grossed $275,000 in Russia.

The leader of the last two weeks, the fanciful action-comedy Hancock (BVSPR) dropped to second place, putting $1,773,064 from 645 screens in its piggybank in its third week (60% less than in its second weekend), for an 18-day total of $23,921,061. Guillermo del Toro’s comic book adaptation Hellboy: The Golden Army (UPI) moved from second to third place, having grossed $1,742,662 from 555 screens in its second weekend (a 56% drop), for a total of $7,151,517 in 11 days. Having moved from third to fourth place, the spy comedy Get Smart (Caro Premier) starring Steve Carell, grossed $554,816 from 310 screens in its second week (a 34% drop), for an 11-day total of $1,839,838. Accounting for the X-Files sequel which broke $1 million in its first weekend and Get Smart, which did so in its second, the “millionaire’s club” is now up to 92 titles.

There were five new films besides the X-Files sequel and three of these made the top ten. In fifth place was the Latvian-Danish-Norwegian animated film Jungo Goes Bananas (Caroprokat), which grossed $271 482 from 207 screens. In seventh place was Asylum (Cascade/Paradise), the American horror film from Snakes on a Plane director David R. Ellis that stars Sarah Roemer (90 screens, $164,697) and in ninth place was the British youth crime drama Bigga Than Ben (Paradise/Plan2Real) with Ben Barnes and Andrei Chadov (83 screens, $152,515). The film’s CIS premiere was also its world premiere, the same as the American film Fireflies in the Garden (West), with Julia Roberts, Ryan Reynolds and Willem Dafoe, which was in 11^th place. This family drama, based on a Robert Frost poem and is directed by Dennis Lee, grossed $86,330 from 81 screens.

Finally, Kaidan, the latest film from Japanese horror master Hideo Nakata, had to make do with 25^th place. Four screens brought Kaidan $3,269.

Total CIS box office for the last weekend in July (July 24-27) was $7,928,205, down 31% from last week.