La bola negra, the Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi drama released by Elástica Films, was No. 1 at the Spain box office for a fifth weekend, taking €2.01m ($2.25m) and 253,599 admissions over 23–25 October, according to figures published by the Italian trade title Box Office. Its total in Spain now stands at €34.3m and 5.11 million admissions.
Key facts
- La bola negra (Elástica Films): €2.01m and 253,599 admissions over 23–25 October, down 31%, from 384 cinemas.
- Total after five weekends: €34.28m ($38.4m) and 5.11 million admissions, fourth among Spanish films on record.
- Spain’s top 20 took €5.48m and 689,879 admissions, 50.8% more money than the same weekend in 2025.
- The Fiesta del Cine promotion (19–22 October, €3.50 tickets) sold 1,544,642 admissions, its best since 2019, per provisional Rentrak data.
The weekend matters less for its €2m than for what it confirms: a 155-minute auteur drama from a Cannes competition slot has become a mass-audience title in its home market, and the rest of the Spanish chart, made up mostly of new US releases, is opening far below it. For a distributor deciding how hard to push Spanish arthouse titles into wide release, La bola negra has moved the reference point.
The top 10
| Rank | Film (distributor) | Weekend | Admissions | Cinemas | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | La bola negra (Elástica) | €2,009,280 | 253,599 | 384 | €34,281,135 |
| 2 | Clayface (Warner Bros.) | €481,175 | 61,536 | 294 | €621,473 |
| 3 | Heart of the Beast (En el corazón de la bestia, Paramount) | €370,176 | 46,823 | 292 | €6,277,859 |
| 4 | Superthings (Filmax) | €272,346 | 37,923 | 276 | €274,447 |
| 5 | Sense and Sensibility (Universal) | €270,527 | 34,907 | 270 | €271,836 |
| 6 | Leones en invierno (Sony) | €263,424 | 36,557 | 274 | €303,466 |
| 7 | Wildwood (Beta Fiction) | €248,173 | 33,809 | 234 | €248,244 |
| 8 | La otra madre (Universal) | €242,486 | 30,922 | n/a | €2,542,213 |
| 9 | BTS World Tour ‘Arirang’ in Buenos Aires: Live Viewing (Version Digital) | €239,826 | 11,960 | 90 | n/a |
| 10 | Arriba Tutto (A Contracorriente) | €174,610 | 24,719 | 263 | €199,516 |
Source: Box Office (boxofficebiz.it), which did not name its data provider; Spain’s weekend chart is normally compiled by Comscore.
La bola negra lost 31% of its takings on the previous weekend and still averaged €5,233 per cinema, the best figure in the top 20. The next-best average belonged to the BTS concert broadcast, at €2,665 from 90 sites. Of the new releases, Clayface, the DC horror film directed by James Watkins, opened second on €481,175, an average of €1,637. That is a modest start next to its No. 1 opening in North America, covered in our report on the US weekend. Four other new titles, from the Filmax animation Superthings to Laika’s stop-motion Wildwood, opened on between €248,000 and €273,000.
Where it sits among Spanish films
The €34.28m total puts La bola negra fourth among Spanish productions in Spain, behind the Ocho apellidos vascos sequel, Ocho apellidos catalanes (€36.1m), J.A. Bayona’s Lo imposible (€42.4m) and Ocho apellidos vascos (€56.2m), according to Box Office. A further €1.8m would lift it to third. If the weekend keeps falling by about 30%, the next two weekends plus weekday takings would cover most of that gap.
The film is an Original Movistar Plus+ production with Suma Content Films, co-produced by El Deseo and Le Pacte with Atresmedia’s participation, according to Movistar Plus+. It premiered in competition at Cannes, where Calvo and Ambrossi won the best director prize (awarded ex aequo that year), and opened in Spain on 25 September. After its cinema run it moves exclusively to Movistar Plus+. Goodfellas handles international sales, and Spain has selected it as its candidate for the 2027 Academy Awards.
The Fiesta del Cine effect
The weekend followed the autumn edition of the Fiesta del Cine, the industry promotion that sells tickets at €3.50 for four days. Provisional Rentrak data reported by Audiovisual451 and Cine y Tele put attendance over 19–22 October at 1,544,642. Each day beat its equivalent in every edition since 2019, peaking at 457,482 on Wednesday.
The comparison with a year ago is stark. The November 2025 edition sold 861,806 tickets, one of the weakest results since the promotion went to four days, so this year’s figure is about 79% higher. It also passed June’s 1,352,668, though the record edition, with 2,598,958 admissions over three days, remains well ahead.
La bola negra was the most-watched film of the promotion and, according to the same data, the third Spanish film to draw the most admissions across every edition, after Ocho apellidos vascos (2014) and Un monstruo viene a verme (2016). Another Spanish title, La maleta, also made the promotion’s top 10.
The promotion ran Monday to Thursday, so its admissions sit outside the weekend window but inside each film’s running total.
What is not known
Box Office did not give screen counts for every title or the rank movements for the rest of the top 20. Fiesta del Cine figures are provisional and are not broken down by film. Takings at €3.50 a ticket are not reported, so the promotion’s share of La bola negra’s euro total cannot be separated. For Spain’s production-services pitch, see our report on the Valladolid locations market; for public funding pressure next door, our report on France’s 2027 budget fight. More charts are in our Box Office section.
Our reading
The run shows how a discounted-ticket promotion and a local hit can feed each other. The Fiesta del Cine brought 1.5 million people into cinemas in four days, and the film most of them chose was already in its fourth week. That kind of repeat lift is hard to buy with marketing, and it favours whichever title has the strongest word of mouth at the time the promotion lands.
For international buyers, the useful figure is the admissions count rather than the euros. More than five million tickets in Spain is the kind of home-market proof sales agents put in front of distributors elsewhere, especially for a long, period drama that would otherwise be sold as festival fare. The next evidence is outside Spain: Le Pacte’s release in France and the territories Goodfellas closes on the back of this run.