Fantasy ruled at the German box office this year but a dearth of home-grown hits (and a summer featuring the cinema-killing soccer World Cup) means box office in the territory will likely drop to its lowest level since 2011. Figures through mid-December, which do not include the final weeks of the boom holiday season, indicate German box office in 2014 will come in just below the €1 billion ($1.22 billion) mark for the first time in four years. But the local industry isn’t worried, looking instead at 2014 as a one-off with the unique combination of a World Cup and a sparse selection of German-language titles, particularly comedies, that traditionally drive locals to the cinema. When it came to Hollywood titles, however, there was no sign of a slump. The top two titles of the year were the final entry in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy and the penultimate film in The Hunger Games franchise.
