Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting earned $740,000 on 42 screens across the country in the first 12 days of release by distributor Alliance Releasing.

The $17,641 per screen average performance for the cutting-edge Scottish film is phenomenal, says Tony Cianciotta, Alliance Releasing vp and gm.

Dealt a limited six-screen release – including two French-track venues in Quebec City – on the July 26-28 weekend, the film rode a tidal wave of press and promotion for the cd album and Irvine Welsh screenplay and novel. It pulled in over $110,000.

On the Aug. 2 Civic Holiday weekend, Trainspotting’s release was extended to 42 screens.

In Quebec City, Alliance, Cineplex Odeon and the police department took the unusual step of handing out 725 free passes to the film’s premiere to a largely disaffected youth and punker audience.

Cianciotta says the film scored ‘the best gross’ in North America over the opening weekend, earning $51,000 on a single screen at Toronto’s Uptown Theatre.

Alliance’s summer and early fall release lineup includes Emma, a new Jane Austen adaptation slated for 26 screens nationally Aug. 9 and already boffo in New York; the sci-fi horror film The Island of Dr. Moreau based on the H.G. Wells classic and starring Marlon Brando as the evil doctor on Aug. 23; and Walter Hill’s Last Man Standing, Sept. 20. Set in the 1920s, the film is a remake of the spaghetti western classic Fistful of Dollars, itself a remake. Bruce Willis stars.

On Oct. 4, Alliance will release 25 or more prints of David Cronenberg’s Crash, the first English-Canadian film to top the box office in France.

Produced by Alliance Communications and sold in over 57 countries, the $15 million Crash took a whopping 20% of the French market, pulling in $1.3 million based on 147,000 admissions in its first five days.