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| Author | Zoe Aresti |
The Weekend Round-up
The Avengers: Age Of Ultron was released on Thursday and in just four days it has already banked a huge £18m. Its Friday to Sunday total of £14.4m is the highest of the year so far and also the highest April opening ever. Avengers Assemble opened on a Thursday in 2012 and managed £15.7m in its opening four days. The £6.2m Age Of Ultron grossed on Saturday was the biggest single day ever for a comic book film.
After three weeks in the top spot, Fast & Furious 7 fell to second but still managed to add a further £1.6m to its total for a huge cume of £34.8m. It’s now just £50k behind Fifty Shades Of Grey in the list of 2015’s biggest films.
Cinderella added £757k in third and crossed the £18m mark in the process. It’s now just £1m behind Maleficent, which it should have the legs to overtake.
Home had another strong hold, falling just 21% to £675k and to date it has banked an impressive £21m.
Event cinema once again proved popular, as Cavalleria Rustica / Pagliacci from the Met Opera completed the top five with £338k.
Outside of the top five, Woman In Gold held up well with £281k in sixth and The Falling was the only other new entry with £144k in eleventh.
On what was the second biggest weekend in the last 52 (although that includes £3.6m in Thursday previews for Age Of Ultron), the box office was up a huge 182% from last weekend and up 104% from the same weekend last year when the biggest films were The Amazing Spider-Man 2, The Other Woman, Transcendence and Rio 2.
Next Weekend
The weekend after a huge blockbuster is released is usually a quieter one but there’s a few new films hoping to make the most of the bank holiday weekend. In what could be a very astute piece of counter-programming, Far From The Madding Crowd is out on Friday. Starring Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts and Michael Sheen this is a real British prestige picture, and as you’d expect looks gorgeous.
Inventive low budget horror, Unfriended, has been a modest hit in the US and it will be looking to scare the hell out of a predominantly 15-24 audience from this Friday.
Monsters: Dark Continent is a sequel to Gareth Edwards’ breakout sci-fi hit from 2010.
Hoping to capitalise on the family audience is Two By Two, an animation about an unusual species that fell off of Noah’s Ark.
The Buzz
Inside Out is without doubt one of the most exciting films for the rest of 2015 and it was screened to a lucky audience at Cinema Con in Las Vegas last week. Although attendees were not supposed to tweet their responses, a few broke the rules to give us an early idea of what we can expect. Christina Warren from Mashable tweeted there was ‘not a dry eye in the house’, Josh Lincoln, also from Mashable, tweeted that it’s ‘an exceptional, groundbreaking film’, and Peter Sciretta from Slash Film said that he’s ‘not allowed to give my reaction but I can say it played well to exhibitors, lots of laughs & crying’. It’s out in the UK on 24 July (which is 88 days away, if you’re counting).
Across The Pond
Furious 7 topped the box office for the fourth straight weekend, falling 39% to $17.8m and to date the action blockbuster has grossed $320.1m. It will fall sharply in the face of The Avengers: Age Of Ultron next weekend but it’s already put in a magnificent performance. Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 held on to second place, adding $14.8m for a 10 day total of $43.2m. Age of Adaline opened in third with $13.2m and the audience was 75% female, and 58% over the age of 25. Home was in fourth with $8m, and to date has a cume of $153.5m and completing the top five was Unfriended, which added $6.2m for a cume of $25.1m.
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