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| Author | Zoe Aresti |
The Weekend Round-up
The Despicable Me series shows no signs of waning popularity, as the third instalment opened with a huge £11.2m. Although that’s lower than the £14.9m Despicable Me 2 opened with, that figure included £4.9m in previews. It’s also the third biggest opening weekend of the year, behind Beauty and the Beast (£19.6m) and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (£13.1m).
Edgar Wright’s action-comedy, Baby Driver, made a great debut, opening with £3.6m, which includes £1.2m from Wednesday and Thursday previews. That’s Wright’s second best opening, behind Hot Fuzz (£5.9m).
Last week’s number one, Transformers: The Last Knight, took a tumble in third, falling 65% to £1.6m. That brings its total to £7.9m and it’s going to fall well short of the last instalment’s final total of £19.5m.
Tupac Shakur biopic, All Eyez on Me, opened in fourth with £913k, which includes £6k from previews. While that’s less than the £2.5m Straight Outta Compton opened with in 2015, it’s still a solid start.
Wonder Woman completed the top five, falling 43% to £911k, which brings its total to £20.7m.
Outside of the top five, Will Ferrell had a rare misfire in sixth. The House also had the comedic power of Amy Poehler but something clearly went wrong as it could only open with £488k. Both of Ferrell’s last two big screen comedies, Get Hard and Daddy’s Home, opened with over £1.4m.
Overall the box office was up 98% from last weekend and up 28% from the same weekend last year, when the top four films were The Secret Life of Pets, Absolutely Fabulous, Central Intelligence and Independence Day: Resurgence.
Next Weekend
Spider-Man: Homecoming is the newest film featuring one of the world’s most popular superheroes. Several months after the events of Captain America: Civil War, Peter Parker, with the help of his mentor Tony Stark, tries to balance his life as an ordinary high school student in Queens, New York City while fighting crime as his superhero alter ego Spider-Man as a new threat, the Vulture, emerges. It’s in cinemas on Wednesday.
It Comes at Night is a spooky horror starring Joel Edgerton and Carmen Ejogo. Secure within a desolate home as an unnatural threat terrorises the world, a man has established a tenuous domestic order with his wife and son, but this will soon be put to test when a desperate young family arrives seeking refuge.
Paw Patrol: Mission Big Screen is an outing for the popular children’s television characters. It looks like it’s only playing at Vue cinemas.
The Buzz
47 Metres Down is a shark thriller about two sisters vacationing in Mexico who are trapped in a shark cage at the bottom of the ocean. With less than an hour of oxygen left and great white sharks circling nearby, they must fight to survive. It opened in the US a couple of weeks ago and while reviews have been lukewarm (it has a score of 53 on Metacritic), it has proved a solid hit with audiences, grossing over $32m to date.
Across the Pond
Despicable Me 3 topped the box office with an impressive $72.4m, although that’s behind the openings of both Despicable Me 2 and Minions. Baby Driver opened on Wednesday and delivered a five-day opening of $30m. Transformers: The Last Knight fell to third, tumbling 62% to $17m, which brings its total to $102.1m. Wonder Woman added $15.6m in fourth, which takes its total to a huge $346.1m. Cars 3 completed the top five, adding $9.7m for a new cume of $120.8m.