Family Movies
More consistently successful, especially at the box office, are children's novels adaptations. Modern Dutch family movies follow in the tradition of Henk van der Linden - who made 38 youth films between 1952 and 1984 - and Karst van der Meulen who made twelve of them in the seventies and eighties. 1998's Abeltje and 1999's Kruimeltje were the highest grossing domestic films of these years. Minoes (2001), Pietje Bell (2002), De Schippers van de Kameleon (2002), Pluk van de Petteflet (2004) and De Kameleon 2 (2005) achieved the same in their respective years. The Dutch children's films also got some international critical claim. For instance, Het Paard van Sinterklaas won awards at six foreign film festivals. This prompted producers to make an internationally oriented, big budget (appr. €12 million) family film, Crusade in Jeans. While a Dutch production, the film had an international cast and was shot in English.
The family oriented films' reign at the top of the domestic box office came to an end in 2006 with Paul Verhoeven's war thriller Black Book, which was the first Dutch film since Kruimeltje to get over a million admissions. Black Book was the most expensive Dutch film production of all time, with a reported budget of just under €18 million. The success was bested only one year later, with the romantic Christmas comedy Alles is Liefde.
Read more about this topic: Cinema Of The Netherlands
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