Despite a potentially record-breaking box office in Quebec, the bilingual buddy movie Bon Cop, Bad Cop has so far failed to arrest audiences in the rest of Canada.

The Quebec movie from Érik Canuel had raked in $8.2 million in ticket sales nationally after 24 days on 256 screens -­ 118 in Quebec and 138 in English Canada - according to Motion Picture Distribution, the distribution wing of Alliance Atlantis.

That puts Bon Cop, Bad Cop on course to surpass the $9.6-million record for a Quebec film set by Charles Binamé's Seraphin: Un homme et son pêché in 2002/03.

The downside is that most of the ticket sales for Bon Cop have been in Quebec and Ontario, and that they fall off sharply further west. The Patrick Huard/Colm Feore-starrer has done $682,725 in cumulative box office outside Quebec after the Aug. 18-20 and Aug. 25-27 weekends, falling short of expectations.

"We think the film's a success story. But it's so massive in Quebec, it makes anything in English Canada look small," says Jim Sherry, executive managing director at MPD.

The problem is that Bon Cop has played far better with art-house audiences in Toronto, for example, than with the action-adventure crowd at the suburban multiplexes that the distributor pursued with its marketing campaign.

Ellis Jacob, president and CEO of Cineplex Entertainment, says Bon Cop's box office held up on Montreal's West Island, and in English-speaking sections of Laval, QC. But the film underperformed in the border town of Cornwall, ON, where English-Canadian movies tend to do well.

"The numbers in English Canada were very weak," Jacob concludes.

Over the Aug. 25-27 weekend, Bon Cop played to a per-screen average of $2,345 in Toronto, dropping to $763 in Calgary and $936 in Vancouver.

Sherry says the distributor is continuing to "grind the film to generate word of mouth" outside of Quebec.

Elsewhere, upcoming Canadian releases include Stéphane Lapointe's romantic comedy La Vie secrète des gens heureux, which will close the Montreal World Film Festival on Sept. 4 and be released in Quebec a day later on around 50 screens. Christal Films plans a $500,000 marketing campaign that includes newspaper, radio and TV advertising.

Christal also plans a modest platform release in Quebec for Jean Beaudin's psychological drama Sans elle, which will go out on Sept. 22 on 25 screens.

Christian Larouche, president of Christal, says the campaign will center on Karine Vanasse (Séraphin), the lead actress already well known in Quebec.

Reviews of Bon Cop, Bad Cop, p. 10.