| Date | |
|---|---|
| Author | Mia Blakeney |
Box Office Round-up
Greta Gerwig’s Barbie has been in cinemas for a month and is now the 8th biggest film of all time. It added £2.7m this weekend, a drop of 39% from last weekend, which takes its total to £84.8m and it has now surpassed last year’s biggest film, Top Gun: Maverick (£83.7m). Next up is Avengers: Endgame on £88.7m and that should be surpassed in a week or so.
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer stayed in second, adding £2m, a drop of 35% from last weekend. After 31 days in cinemas it’s up to £50.1m. Over the next couple of weeks it should overtake The Super Mario Bros. Movie (£54.4m) to become the second biggest film of 2023, and then will overtake The Dark Knight Rises (£56.4m) and Dunkirk (£56.7m) to become Christopher Nolan’s biggest film.
Blue Beetle opened in third with £1.2m. This is the third DC Comics film to hit cinemas this year and it has delivered the lowest opening weekend of the three, behind The Flash (£3.2m) and Shazam! Fury Of The Gods (£2.4m). It would appear that the upcoming DC reboot is much needed.
After The Meg 2: The Trench took something of a dive last weekend, it showed greater buoyancy this weekend, falling 38% to £973k. That takes its total after 17 days in cinemas to £9.8m. The final total of The Meg was £15.9m, and while this sequel probably won’t get there, it’s still a strong showing.
New entry, Strays, rounded out the top five opening with £599k, which includes £90k from Thursday previews. Universal have had notable success this year with 15-cert comedies, including Cocaine Bear (£5.7m) and M3GAN (£7.3m) but it looks like Strays isn’t going to be quite as successful.
Outside of the top five, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One in eighth is just a shade under £25m and this week will become the first Mission: Impossible film in history to cross that mark. Elemental in ninth posted the kind of hold a family film in late-summer can post, falling 13% to £388k, which takes it over the £16m mark to £16.2m.
While the box office was down 28% from last weekend, it’s up 40% from the same weekend last year.
Next Weekend
The Blackening is a horror comedy that’s in cinemas from Wednesday. Seven friends go away for the weekend and end up trapped in a cabin with a killer who has a vendetta. Will their street smarts and knowledge of horror movies help them stay alive? Probably not.
Theater Camp is a comedy about the eccentric staff of a rundown theatre camp in upstate New York who must band together with the beloved founder's bro-y son to keep the camp afloat.
Scrapper is a new British comedy-drama. Georgie, a 12-year-old girl, lives happily alone in her London flat, filling it with magic. Suddenly, her estranged father turns up and forces her to confront reality.
The Buzz
One Life is a new British drama starring Anthony Hopkins, Helena Bonham-Carter and Johnny Flynn. It follows British humanitarian Nicholas Winton who helped save hundreds of children from the Nazis on the eve of World War II. Winton’s story was brought to the public’s consciousness on the television show That’s Life, which features heavily in the film. It has been named as the prestigious AMEX gala at this year’s BFI London Film Festival and with Hopkins a recent Best Actor Oscar winner for The Father, it could make a splash at next year’s major awards. It’s in cinemas on 1 January and is a great way to reach a 45+ ABC1 audience in early 2024.
Across The Pond
Blue Beetle opened in the top spot in North America with $25.4m, knocking Barbie down to second. Barbie added $21.5m and after 31 days in cinemas has banked a huge $559.3m. Oppenheimer fell to third, adding $10.6m which takes its total to $290.3m. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem added $8m in fourth for a new total of $89m. Strays fared slightly better in North America than in the UK, opening with $8.3m.