Russia's most expensive movie Burnt by the Sun 2 goes flop

Burnt by the Sun 2 (Утомлённые Солнцем 2) is a continuation of Oscar-awarded (Best Foreign Language Film in 1994) movie Burnt by the Sun, directed by Nikita Mikhalkov. It's a WW2 epic of the same director with a budget of 55 million dollars, that makes it the most expensive Russian film ever since Soviet times (USSR had several times more expensive movies, for example War and peace is the most expensive movie in the history of Earth, it's budget was 700 millions calculated in modern dollars). The sequel was divided into 2 parts: Burnt by the Sun 2: Exodus and Burnt by the Sun 3: The Citadel. It is scheduled to compete for the Palme d'Or at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival.

For the first week the movie gathered only less than 4 millions in box-office. I see 2 reasons for it:
1. Russians don't like historical movies as a genre. All Russian recent historical movies were commercially unsuccessful, except for Turkish Gambit that was more a detective action movie than historical film.
2. Russians don't like movies divided into 2 parts. Paragraph 78, Inhabited Island, Hooked were commercial flops.

1941. Five years have passed since the lives and destinies of General Kotov, his wife Maroussia, their daughter Nadia - as well as those of Mitia and the Sverbitski family - were irrevocably changed.

Five years of incarceration for General Kotov, the former Revolutionary hero betrayed by Stalin, who escapes certain death in the Gulag and finds himself fighting at the front as a private.

Five years of terror for Maroussia, without the husband she believes dead and the daughter who has rejected her.

For Nadia, five years of hiding - always proud of the valiant father who she refuses to disown and whom she believes is alive, despite all reports to the contrary.

Five years of survival for Mitia who, having survived a suicide attempt, reluctantly continues to execute the orders of a regime he holds in contempt.

And five years for Comrade Stalin who, finding himself attacked by former ally Adolf Hitler, is forced to recall the elite he had exiled to the camps and to mobilize the Russian population - by any means necessary - to rise against the threat of fascism.

Burnt by Sun 2: Exodus (Утомлённые Солнцем 2: Предстояние) opened in Russian theaters on April 22, 2010.