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| Author | Zoe Aresti |
Despite stiff competition from tennis and, in particular football, over the weekend, Marvel’s Black Widow topped the box office with the biggest opening in the pandemic era. The first Marvel film in cinemas for two years, since Spider-Man: Far From Home, opened with £6.8m, which includes £2.2m from previews after opening on Wednesday. While the Friday to Sunday total of £4.6m is not quite as big as the Friday to Sunday total of Fast & Furious 9 on opening weekend, Black Widow would have topped it, had it not been for the expected steep drop off on Sunday, the day of the Euro 2020 final.
Fast & Furious 9 fell to second, but added £1.1m, a drop of 59% from last weekend. That takes its total after three weekends in cinema to £13.1m and it will hopefully be around for a while longer now that it doesn’t have to compete with international football. Peter Rabbit 2 came in third and posted another strong hold, falling just 38% to £546k and a new total of £18.3m. It has now overtaken Tenet to become the highest grossing film of the pandemic era, and it’s total of £18.3m and counting looks like it will be out of reach of Fast & Furious 9. Over to you, Black Widow.
A Quiet Place Part II came in fourth, adding £261k for a new total of £10.9m. It’s now less than £1.3m behind the total of the first A Quiet Place, which is a terrific result. In The Heights completed the top five, adding £232k, a drop of 50% from last weekend, for a new total of £3.8m. Outside of the top five, The Conjuring The Devil Made Me Do It, added £128k in eighth and has now grossed £9.1m. It has now surpassed the final total of all the Annabelle films, which are part of The Conjuring universe, and sits less than £1.4m behind the final total of The Conjuring. Another Round posted the strongest hold of any film in the top 10, falling just 24% to £98k and a new total of £424k, a great result for a foreign language title.
Comscore is reporting that there were 787 cinemas open across the UK and Ireland at the weekend.
Next Weekend
The Croods 2: A New Age is a sequel to the 2013 animated hit. This time around the prehistoric family the Croods are challenged by a rival family the Bettermans, who claim to be better and more evolved.
Space Jam: A New Legacy is a new version of the 1996 hit that starred Michael Jordan. This time around a rogue artificial intelligence kidnaps the son of famed basketball player LeBron James, who then has to work with Bugs Bunny to win a basketball game.
Escape Room: Tournament Of Champions is a horror sequel to the 2019 film. Six people unwittingly find themselves locked in another series of escape rooms, slowly uncovering what they have in common to survive. Joining forces with two of the original survivors, they soon discover they've all played the game before.
The Forever Purge is the fifth film in The dystopian horror series. All the rules are broken as a sect of lawless marauders decides that the annual Purge does not stop at daybreak and instead should never end.
Across The Pond
Black Widow topped the box office in the US too, opening with a terrific $80m and smashing the previous pandemic-era record set by Fast & Furious 9 in the process. Fast & Furious 9 fell to second but added $10.9m, a drop of 53% from last weekend, which takes its total to $141.3m. The Boss Baby: Family Business came in third, adding $8.7m for a new total of $34.7m, while The Forever Purge came in fourth, adding $6.7m for a new total of $27.4m. A Quiet Place Part II completed the to five, adding $3m for a new total of $150.7m.