「銀河ヒッチハイクガイド」の興収が「42」百万ポンド！

全英で「銀河ヒッチハイクガイド」が封切。作者のお膝元の国だけに、当然興収一位！ということは、アメリカとイギリスで同時に売り上げナンバーワン映画に？！こ、こんなに売れるとは内心びっくり。

さらに驚くのは、イギリスでの第一週の興行収入が「42,000,000ポンド」
42つまり作中に出てくる「人生、宇宙、すべてという究極の質問に対する回答」と同じ。嬉しい偶然？ちなみに全米の初登場での興収は「21,000,000ドル」で、「42の半分」だそうです。うーん、オカルトめいてきました。

ガーディアンさん、首相選挙も近いのに、こんなトリビア記事にうつつ抜かしてていいんでしょーか。

Guardian Unlimited Film | News | Hitchhiker's Guide to netting �4.2m

Hitchhiker's Guide to netting £4.2m

Colin Blackstock
Wednesday May 4, 2005
The Guardian

To fans of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy it will come as no surprise. They've always known the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything is 42. But in a "delightfully improbable coincidence", the film has taken £4.2m in its opening weekend.

The film version of Adams' cult classic went straight to the top of the British film chart over the bank holiday weekend. In the US the film has done the same, knocking the Nicole Kidman thriller The Interpreter off the top spot.

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A spokesman for Buena Vista, the Disney company behind the film, said the £4.2m figure was "a delightfully improbable coincidence".

"I'm sure the fact that the film's opening gross was £4.2m would have delighted Douglas Adams," he said.

In the story, the supercomputer Deep Thought finally reveals that the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything is 42.

Adams fans put forward various theories as to what it all meant. But the writer later admitted: "The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base-13, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought '42 will do'. I typed it out. End of story."

The film features The Office star Martin Freeman as reluctant hero Arthur Dent, who wakes up one morning to find the Earth is being demolished to make way for an intergalactic bypass.

Adams' story started life on the radio and was turned into a TV series and several novels before making it to the big screen.

The film surprised American pundits when it went to the top of the chart and took more than $21m (£11m).

Whether fans will make anything of this figure is debatable, but it's unlikely to go unnoticed that it's half of 42.