THE film star Tom Cruise is being savaged at the American box office by a troupe of lovelorn birds.

March of the Penguins, a low-budget wildlife film about the mating habits of the emperor penguin, is promising to be the surprise hit of the summer after pulling in larger audiences at the few cinemas where it has been shown than Cruise’s War of the Worlds and the other summer blockbuster, Batman Begins, combined.

It has proved so popular in its first two weeks in 20 cinemas that it was opening at 350 others this weekend.

“This film is awesome,” said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations, which analyses ticket-buying habits for Los Angeles studios. “No one saw it coming and where it’s been released so far it’s outperforming all the big boys. It’s all down to word of mouth, friends’ recommendations rather than studio hype.”

The film — described by one critic as an avian version of When Harry Met Sally — was born with a classified advertisement in a French newspaper in 1991 that read: “Wanted, biologist willing to spend 14 months at the end of the world.”

Luc Jacquet, who at 24 had just graduated with a masters in animal biology from Lyons University, applied and found himself in Antarctica with a 35mm camera and instructions to “follow the bloody birds around until they mate”.

“What I really discovered in Antarctica is not just that it has the strongest winds on earth — and of course penguins only mate in the deepest winter when temperatures are down to -85F — but that I wanted to tell stories,” Jacquet said.

Back in France, it was the year 2000 before he wrote the screenplay for the film, a love story about penguins who walk up to 70 miles though blizzards in search of the right ice shelf on which to breed.

With some funding from National Geographic, he returned to Antarctica for 13 months, trailing a flock of birds and shooting the footage of love, sex, birth and death he needed for his narrative. “I think they are a very special species,” he said. “There are very few animals, or even humans, that can communicate their feelings so well, and make us laugh and weep at the same time.”

Audiences have been entranced. The original French-language version of the film — which cost just £5m to make — has been the third most successful in France this year.

The penguins are riding a wave of successful documentaries such as Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me and, perhaps most closely, another French nature film, Winged Migration, which followed birds around the world.

Jacquet badly wanted his film shown in America as well as France. The script was revised and Morgan Freeman, 68, the veteran Hollywood star, was brought in as narrator. The “penguin movie”, as it is known in the industry, took an average £15,000 at each of the cinemas where it was being shown last weekend, compared with £11,000 for War of the Worlds, and £2,940 for Batman Begins.

The total US take of £450,000 to date is a fraction of the War of the Worlds’ £74m — but that was expected to soar when it went on more general release. Hollywood experts predict it will ultimately prove far more profitable per pound invested than Cruise’s film.

“Some people thought it was odd to release a film about penguins in the summer, but we regarded it as smart counter-programming, and the risk has paid off,” said a Warner executive.

By coincidence, Freeman, who won an Oscar last year for best supporting actor in Million Dollar Baby, also performs the voice-over narrative for War of the Worlds. Asked last week which he preferred, he replied: “Both are extraordinary, but I know which one I would take the grandchildren to.” Corbis

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