‘A.R.O.G’ breaks new box-office record

‘A.R.O.G’ breaks new box-office record

Comedian Cem Yılmaz’s hit sci-fi comedy “A.R.O.G” broke yet another record on Friday, drawing 2,050,000 filmgoers to theaters across Turkey in its first week, the Turkish movie Web site Sadibey has reported.

“A.R.O.G” now the holds the first week box-office record of all time in Turkish cinema. The Stone-Age comedy, starring, co-written and co-directed by Yılmaz, beat the previous record holder, “Kurtlar Vadisi Irak” (Valley of the Wolves: Iraq), which drew 1,927,752 moviegoers in its first week, when it opened in Turkish theaters in 2006, according to figures posted at www.sadibey.com.

“A.R.O.G” broke another record in Turkey last week when it surpassed the 1 million viewer mark in box office figures just four days after it opened on Dec. 5. The film, shown on 685 screens in 406 movieplexes across Turkey, managed to gain a spot among the top five films in box-office lists last week in Germany as well. It also did well in Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands, where it opened the same date it premiered in Turkey, and was screened in four other European countries, including Britain, France and Denmark.

With a budget of over 8 million euros, “A.R.O.G” holds the title of being the most expensive film ever made in the history of Turkish cinema, its producers say. “A.R.O.G” is the follow-up to Yılmaz’s 2004 space comedy “G.O.R.A,” which followed the adventures of Turkish carpet salesman Arif (Yılmaz) in space. Yılmaz plays numerous characters in the new film, as he did in the first one. In this new adventure, Arif is beamed by his nemesis, Commander Logar (also played by Yılmaz), 1 million years back in time, to an earth dominated by Stone Age creatures. Arif quickly makes friends in the Stone Age, but his sole wish is to return to the present and back to his pregnant wife, Ceku (Özge Özberk). To do this, he needs an ultra fast-moving technological breakthrough to build a working time machine. This means bringing his barbarian contemporaries to the present -- or even to an advanced -- technological state in the shortest time possible by racing them through the ages.