Puking from fairy tales: film critic called billions of losses of Russian cinema an anti-record

A significant part of Russian releases from January to June 2026 were unprofitable. This was stated at the NSN press center by film critic David Schneiderov.

"From January 1 to June 30, 2026, 130 Russian films were released, of which eight paid off, and three of them are Yakut. The most profitable high-budget releases: "Cheburashka 2", "The Tale of Tsar Saltan", "Prostokvashino", "Domovenok Kuzya 2" and "My heart will be broken.“ The most unprofitable high—budget films are "Lefty", "Kolobok", "Angels of Ladoga", "The King of my Love" and so on," said Schneiderov.

According to him, the losses of the Russian cinema in the first half of the year amounted to 16 billion rubles.

"In just 15 years — 200 billion rubles. This is an anti—record in the history of Russian cinema," the film critic is sure.

At the same time, Roman Isaev, a member of the council of the Association of Cinema Owners, said that cinemas were satisfied with the result of both "Serf 3" and the summer period as a whole.

"This summer we really got decent numbers of film attendance and box office. "Serf 3" collected 1.2 billion. We would like him to collect more, but, probably, the national love for Pavel Priluchny is already fading, or other factors have played a role. Nevertheless, he collected a billion — and okay. He did not beat off his budget. Before that, not a single Russian film had collected such money during the summer period. "Kolobok" can really reach up to 1.4 billion, and even up to 1.5 billion. Because now the wave of haight, dispersed in his direction by irresponsible media, has come down. As for the "Spider‑Man" scandal, previously all such issues were resolved within the industry. Despite everything, this summer has given a breath of air to cinemas," Isaev retorted.

At the same time, the head of the united network "Cinema Park" and "Formula Cinema" Alexey Vasyasin noted the successful rental of the biopic "Michael", which collected more than 2.2 billion rubles in Russia.

"This once again emphasizes that there are no bad periods, but there are bad films," Vasyasin concluded.

Schneiderov added that this figure "once again emphasizes that Russians want to watch good imported movies."

"They are already puking from fairy tales, from infinitely bad ones," the film critic spoke emotionally.

Vasyasin corrected the critic, noting that "Russians want to watch good movies, no need to add — foreign or Russian."

"Russians, like any other nation, want to watch good movies…There are good films, but we really lack blockbusters. And the fact that many people say that we need to make more movies — we don't need to make more movies, we need to make better movies, more technologically advanced movies," Vasyasin concluded.