Un p’tit truc en plus becomes the biggest French hit of the decade and enters a very exclusive club dominated by Titanic, Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis and Intouchables
“I got 10,000,000 on my birthday, that’s crazy.”On Saturday, comedian Artus, 37, was delighted with the director’s unexpected success of the year. “With this film, you gave me the greatest gift ever, and one I will never have.””, he wrote on Instagram.
Distributor Pan Distribution announced that it had crossed that threshold after just over 15 weeks of operation.
Artus’s first film has been in theaters since May 1 and after only a month has already achieved the feat of being the biggest theatrical success in France since the Covid-19 health crisis. It has already surpassed Guillaume Canet’s Asterix and Obelix: The Middle Kingdom, which had 4.6 million viewers in 2023 and a much higher budget.
According to its distributor, the film is the most successful film of the year, following “The Bad Side 2” and “Dune: The Second Part,” and is now the 30th highest-grossing film of all time in France and the 12th highest-grossing film in France.
For Artus, whose real name was Victor-Artus Solaro, his dream was to reach the goal of “11.5 million ‘Corniaud'” (1965) with Bourvil and Louis de Funès. “This will put us among the top ten highest-grossing French films”he recently told Le Parisien.
Rare vulnerabilities
With 10 million productions, the comedian has achieved a rather rare result, especially in recent years. Here he is in a very exclusive club, with titles like Titanic (1997, 22.3 million viewers), Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis (2008, 20.5 million viewers) and The Intouchables (19, 2011, 5 million viewers).
The number of films that have broken this milestone in France in the past decade can be counted on one hand, and they were mostly American.
These were Avatar: The Waterway (2022), The Lion King (2019), Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015) and the French comedy What Do We Do With God? (2014). Until Un p’tit truc en plus, a feature film directed by Christian Clavier and Chantal Lauby with 12.3 million admissions, became the last French film to reach this threshold.
The success felt like revenge for Artus, who struggled to find producers to finance this first film that claimed to have laughs with disabled people rather than at their expense.
Photo credit: AFP/Archive/Christophe SIMON.
Documentary Films in 2025
On-screen father and son Clovis Kornilak and Artus play two little thugs who hide in the middle of a summer camp for mentally retarded young people to escape the police. Artus plays a boarding student and Clovis Kornilak plays his professional educator.
About ten amateur actors with disabilities responded to the professional cast, including one by Alice Belaïdi.
Associations in the disability sector welcomed the film, saying it offered a fairly realistic and humane vision of mental disability, a small “Pierre” Welcome to try“Improving the status quo” relevant persons.
This is a “A feel good movie”With this success, Artus confirmed, Artus became the highest-grossing French director for a debut film, surpassing the nearly 8.9 million tickets Just Jaeckin earned in 1974 with Emmanuelle.
The comedy was screened in about fifteen countries and was honored at the Cannes Film Festival in May, where the film team took to the stage.
If he’s not planning a follow-up, Artus is working on it “Behind the Scenes of 2025”Starting from July 17, viewers can also enjoy a 12-minute behind-the-scenes featurette at the end of the film.
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