| Date | |
|---|---|
| Author | Emma Willis |
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice made it three weekends in the top spot, adding £2.5m, a drop of 42% from last weekend. That takes its total to £18.2m, and it’s now the eighth biggest film released so far this year and the fourth biggest film for director, Tim Burton, behind only Dumbo (£25.1m), Charlie And The Chocolate Factory (£37.8m) and Alice In Wonderland (£42.6m).
Speak No Evil posted a strong hold in second, falling just 32% to 814k, which takes its total to £2.9m. It’s horror masters Blumhouse’s fourth release of 2024 and is already their biggest film of the year, having overtaken March’s Imaginary (£2m). It looks set to be the second-biggest non-franchise horror of 2024, behind only Longlegs.
MUBI’s body-horror The Substance made a decent start, opening in third with £591k, which includes £72k from previews. Distributor, MUBI have become one of the most successful distributors of independent cinema and The Substance has delivered their second-best opening weekend, behind only January’s Priscilla. That film is also their biggest film to date with £3.3m, which looks out of reach for The Substance but it has a good chance of becoming their second biggest film, a title that is currently held by Aftersun with £1.9m.
Lee posted a terrific hold in fourth, falling just 21% to £556k, which takes its total to £1.8m. One of Kate Winslet’s last lead roles on the big screen was in 2017’s The Mountain Between Us, alongside Idris Elba, and that film finished on £2.6m, which looks eminently achievable for Lee.
Rounding out the top five is one of the King’s of the UK box office, Christopher Nolan, as the 10th Anniversary re-release of his science-fiction epic, Interstellar banked £454k across the weekend. Nolan films often do well with re-releases and Interstellar looks like it will outperform the 10th anniversary re-release of Inception which grossed £595k in 2020.
Outside of the top five, Despicable Me 4 keeps on going, falling just 5% from last weekend and it’s now up to £46.7m. It’s set to continue the remarkable trend of all Minions / Despicable Me sequels of finishing between £47m and £48m.
Another family film 200% Wolf opened in seventh with £237k. This is a sequel to 100% Wolf which opened in July 2020 and took advantage of being one of the few new films in cinemas at the time to reach £1.5m.
Next weekend
- The Outrun is an adaptation of Amy Liptrot’s novel. After living life on the edge in London, Rona (Saoirse Ronan) attempts to come to terms with her troubled past. Hoping to heal, she returns to the wild beauty of Scotland's Orkney Islands where she grew up
- Never Let Go is a horror starring Halle Berry as the matriarch of a family that has been haunted by an evil spirit for years. Their safety and their surroundings come into question when one of the children questions if the evil is real.
- Megalopolis is the self-funded epic from legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather trilogy, Apocalypse Now, The Conversation, Bram Stoker’s Dracula). The city of New Rome is the main conflict between Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), a brilliant artist in favour of a utopian future, and the greedy mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito). Between them is Julia Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel), her loyalty divided between her father and her beloved.
- Shaun Of The Dead (20th Anniversary) is a re-release of Edgar Wright’s classic British horror-comedy.
The Buzz
Mickey 17 is the latest film from Bong Joon-ho, Oscar-winning director of Parasite. Wanting to get out of Earth, Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) signs up to be an ‘expendable’, a disposable employee where after one iteration dies, a new body is regenerated with most of their memories intact. After one of his multiples, Mickey 17, unintentionally survives a human expedition to colonise the ice world Niflheim, he goes head-to-head with a new multiple, Mickey 18. Joon-ho is one of the world’s greatest filmmakers and any new film from him is an event, especially after the phenomenon that was Parasite. Mickey 17 stars Pattinson alongside Naomi Ackie, Tilda Swinton, Toni Collette, Mark Ruffalo and Steven Yeun and it opens in the UK cinemas on 31 January.
Across The Pond
In a close race at the top of the box office, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice just managed to hold off Transformers One to top the box office for a third successive weekend. Tim Burton’s blockbuster sequel added $26m for a new total of $226.8m, while Transformers One was just behind in second with $25m. Speak No Evil fell to third adding $5.9m for a new total of $21.5m. Never Let Go opened in fourth with $4.5m, while Deadpool & Wolverine rounded out the top five, adding $3.9m for a new total of $627.3m.