“ZWEIGSTELLE” SELLS MORE THAN 100,000 TICKETS.
You have reached a great milestone with your first feature film, "Zweigstelle" by Julius Grimm: more than 100,000 tickets have been sold at the box office since its release on October 9. Congratulations! Was this success foreseeable?
Simon Bogocz: You really have to start at the Munich Film Festival, where we celebrated our world premiere. Our first screening was sold out within two and a half hours. That was the first sign that the audience was obviously interested in our film. Well, of course half of the auditorium was now filled with Friends & Family 😄. The second screening was also completely sold out, the third, which was scheduled as a special screening after we won the audience award, was three quarters full. Our first "regular" screening followed at the open air at Munich's Königsplatz. There were 800 tickets sold on that one day - even in rainy weather! Here we were able to get a first feel for the potential of the film.
Felix Mann: Weltkino started with "Zweigstelle" as a small debut film, usually with debut films you assume that they will only reach a handful of viewers, but after the festival commitment of the Munich Film Festival, the exploitation strategy became bigger and bigger.
Ben Ulrich: The whole thing has grown steadily, both the expectations and the commitment of the distributor. Until two or three weeks before the theatrical release. You could also see that when considering the number of copies to be released: First there were 80, then 100, then 120 and in the end it started with around 200 copies. In the second week of release, even more cinemas were added.
Felix Mann: We already had very successful sneaks and previews before the official theatrical release and a total of 10,000 viewers before the theatrical release. These pre-screenings were always well attended and there were also screenings with Q&As where we were present and were able to get direct feedback from the audience. That was incredibly good and indicated the direction of who our main target group would be.
"It was exciting to see how the movie grooved."
Ben Ulrich
And you also went on a movie tour...
Simon Bogocz: It was really great! We were there at many of the stops ourselves. It was a completely new experience for us and simply overwhelming to see complete strangers buying tickets for our film and then being so enthusiastic about it.
"Zweigstelle" by Julius Grimm (Credit: Luis Zeno Kuhn, WennDann Film)
How did it fare in the various cinemas, from multiplexes to single-screen theaters?
Ben Ulrich: It was exciting to see how the movie grooved in. The Kinopolis Group's Mathäser was one of the strongest theaters. But at the same time, it screened excellently in small theaters... all over Germany. From multiplexes to small arthouse cinemas, everything was there. In the end, it's impossible to say where it would have been more appropriate. The crossover strategy across cinemas was exactly right!
"Zweigstelle" definitely also has a "Bavarian flavor". Is that why the theatrical release focused on Bavaria?
Simon Bogocz: In the beginning, most of the prints were used in Bavaria. But the longer the film ran, the more it spilled over into the more northerly federal states - the good run in Bavaria was like a seal of approval and made many cinemas outside Bavaria curious. There are still cinemas from more northerly regions that are only now starting to show the film. Hamburg and Berlin are very strong locations, in Berlin we were even promoted in the subway. We are very pleased that our branch is not only relevant in Bavaria.
Felix Mann: We won the second audience award at the Filmkunstmesse in Leipzig. We were very pleased about that. The film has a Bavarian attribution, but it's not so clearly Bavarian.
Ben Ulrich: Most recently, the strongest cinemas were in Lower Saxony. We have a WhatsApp group with the distributor in which we communicate the daily figures. And every now and then there's crazy news, such as when a cinema has slipped to number one because a large group of altar boys bought all their tickets in one go the night before.
Simon Bogocz: My favorite was a screening in one of the Cineplex Group's cinemas, which sold out a large auditorium for the breakfast cinema on Thursday mornings. We were always overwhelmed to see how our film was received in the various event series, including "Knitting in the Cinema". It was also great to see, and completely new for us, how much influence the individual cinema operators have on the success of the film and how different all cinemas are. We definitely got a taste of cinema and want to continue.
"We worked together with Weltkino on the exploitation right from the start."
Simon Bogocz
How did you experience working with Weltkino?
Simon Bogocz: We wanted to break with distributor production clichés and worked together with Weltkino on the exploitation right from the start. We had marketing meetings before we started shooting, in which we discussed how we could shoot images during the shoot, what our artwork could look like and what social media content should be created. It was really collaborative, at eye level.
Felix Mann: We always kept the evaluation in mind. Roy Bianco & The Abbrunzati Boys as a band, for example: When you see them in the movie, virtually playing themselves, it's very funny and will certainly have attracted several thousand fans to the cinemas. The band, which fills really big halls, always promoted our movie at their concerts... We also love all their songs and they fitted perfectly into the movie in terms of content. The distributor took us by the hand, but also let us do a lot and was always happy to implement our ideas. For example, we wanted to print beer mats as advertising material because we knew that some of our audience like to go to pubs. So Weltkino had them made and sent them to us.
Simon Bogocz: For one week, we were able to pay five friends and "Zweigstelle" crew members to distribute promotional material with us in Munich and the surrounding area. We had 13,000 flyers, 2,000 beer mats and 3,000 posters... We wanted the film to be seen - we gave it our all. It's not a matter of course that a distributor puts in the same effort. Nobody knew whether the film would really work in theaters and we had never produced a theatrical film before. The fact that Weltkino gave us the commitment so early on to give the film a proper theatrical release was courageous.
There's also music in it: "Zweigstelle" by Julius Grimm (Credit: WennDann Film/Luis Zeno Kuhn)
You just stayed true to your company credo: If, then do it right! Looking back on the year with a view to your WennDann Film GmbH, which was founded in 2022: are you completely satisfied?
Felix Mann: Completely. The hot phase with "Zweigstelle" started for us exactly one year ago, especially from January 2025 ... The four-week shoot followed at the beginning of February. In post-production, we worked at an incredible speed so that we were in a position to submit to the Munich Film Festival. It all happened very quickly and something was happening all the time. We had to split up internally because we started shooting our second feature film during the Munich Film Festival. That was really exciting. As a student at film school, everything takes place on a smaller scale. With "Zweigstelle", everything was suddenly different. We received so much positive feedback from people all over Germany, even by postcard!
Ben Ulrich: By the way, our second film is called "I understand your displeasure" and is Kilian Armando Friedrich's feature film debut, which we produced with ZDF/Kleines Fernsehspiel. Producing and shooting two projects almost back-to-back was very intense. And despite all the stress, we mustn't forget that we want to and have to develop new projects in parallel.
Felix Mann: We are already developing a new project with Julius Grimm. Working together on "Zweigstelle" was just such a great experience - from start to finish. In our opinion, there has to be a good match between creatives and producers. That's the case with us and Julius - we're a match!
"A good tolerance for frustration is definitely important."
Felix Mann
You've appeared on the industry's radar...
Simon Bogocz: Definitely. The impact we made at the Munich Film Festival was hugely important. We were simply very loud there with our film. It's also where the industry meets and you get to talk to lots of people. We're really pleased that the popularity of the film has also spread to regular moviegoers. "Zweigstelle" suits us because it's not just the result that counts for us, but also how we work together. We are absolute team players and love working together as a team to get a project off the ground. On the other hand, we like films that combine serious themes with entertainment. That's the case with "Zweigstelle". And we want to continue in this direction.
You all studied at the HFF Munich and got a good grounding there. Nevertheless, it is certainly a challenge to establish yourselves as a young company. Did you also have to overcome hurdles and are there things that aren't going so well in the industry?
Simon Bogocz: At first you just assume there will be hurdles, especially in the debut sector. We have the spirit to say: never mind, we'll do it anyway and we'll manage it. That's how we approached "Zweigstelle". Of course, many obstacles were put in our way, but in the end we made the film anyway and were pleasantly surprised by the things that worked out.
Felix Mann: To be honest, there were a lot of hurdles. I'm so glad that there are three of us. If one of us is down, the other two can build him up. A good tolerance for frustration is definitely important. All young people who enter the film industry know that. This makes it all the more important to maintain a certain basic optimism, which we have developed over the four years, and simply keep going.
Ben Ulrich: Optimism on the one hand, realism on the other. It was very good that we were able to prove ourselves with "Zweigstelle" and at the same time learned how incredibly difficult it is to get people into the movies. We are still in a phase of development, but with "Zweigstelle" we have definitely taken a step forward and become more self-confident. The initial fears are less!
"Zweigstelle" has set the bar high for further cinema projects, even though WennDann Film doesn't just stand for cinema...
Simon Bogocz: We are interested in moving images, in whatever form they take. This year we also shot an upright mini-series and continue to do branded entertainment. One stimulates the other and it's also nice to experience a day of shooting with a completely new industry, immerse yourself in a different world and be done after two weeks. We don't want to close ourselves off to any format.
Felix Mann: But our heart beats for cinema. Cinema is just an incredibly difficult path... You achieve success faster in other media sectors. Cinema is the supreme discipline. The fact that we were able to succeed straight away with "Zweigstelle" is amazing. We also see the project, which was the debut project for all the heads of department, as proof for the film industry: you can rely on young talent!
The interview was conducted by Barbara Schuster