| Date | |
|---|---|
| Author | Tom Linay |
The Weekend Round-up
Big Hero 6 held on to the top spot for the second successive week, again withstanding a challenge from Kingsman: The Secret Service and also from rival family film Shaun The Sheep Movie. The Disney / Marvel animation eased 33% to £2.5m and now has a cume of £7.5m.
Kingsman: The Secret Service stayed in second after adding a further £2.2m, and after eleven days in cinemas has banked a very healthy £8.2m. Despite losing out to Big Hero 6 over the past two weekends, Kingsman comfortably defeated the animation from Monday to Thursday last week and expect it to do the same this week.
Shaun The Sheep Movie was the highest new entry with £2.1m. This is the latest film from stop-motion geniuses, Aardman, and of all their films this one is aimed at the youngest audience, so £2.1m is a solid start. It’s also a better Friday to Sunday start than Aardman’s last film, The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists made in March 2012.
Jupiter Ascending opened in fourth with £1.3m. This is the third big budget film in a row from the Wachowski siblings to make a disappointing start, after Speed Racer (£362k) and Cloud Atlas (£545k), and the days of them being given $175m to make a film may well be numbered.
American Sniper completed the top five, adding a further £980k and now has an impressive cume of £11.1m. It will shortly overtake The Grand Budapest Hotel to be the third highest grossing of this year’s awards hopefuls, behind The Theory Of Everything and The Imitation Game.
Outside of the top five, Selma opened with £792k, which included £70k from previews. It was a high profile absentee from this year’s major BAFTA nominations and this will have undoubtedly hindered its commercial potential.
Overall the box office was down 17% from last weekend and down 4% from the same weekend last year, when the top films were Mr.Peabody And Sherman, Robocop, The Wolf Of Wall Street and Dallas Buyers Club.
Next Weekend
Fifty Shades Of Grey is out on Friday! It has its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival on Wednesday and is then released all over an expectant public on Friday.
Peppa Pig: The Golden Boots is released on Friday to capitalise on the half term audience. It’s the popular television character’s big screen debut but it will face stiff competition from Big Hero 6 and Shaun The Sheep Movie.
Time travel thriller Project Almanac is out on Monday (16 February). It’s been out in the US for two weeks now and has grossed a disappointing $15.8m to date, so expectations here are not high.
The Buzz
It may be 10 years since the last SpongeBob film but The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water opened in the US at the weekend and improved on the first SpongeBob film’s performance by a huge 75% (see below). This bodes well for its release in the UK on 27 March, where it will be looking to eclipse the first movie’s £5.7m final total. Another Easter film, Seventh Son also opened in the US this weekend and with a dreadful score of 30 on reviews aggregator, Metacritic, it could only muster a paltry $7.1m.
Across The Pond
The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water topped the box office with an impressive $55.4m, leaving a couple of high profile new releases trailing in its wake. American Sniper dropped to second easing just 24% to $23.3m and has now grossed a remarkable $281.4m. Jupiter Ascending took third, opening with $18.4m, which is hugely disappointing for a film that reportedly cost $175m to make. Seventh Son was the unwanted child in fourth with just $7.2m. Project Almenac completed the top five with $5.2m and a cume of $15.7m.
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