| Date | |
|---|---|
| Author | Tom Linay |
The Weekend Round-up
Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them held on to the top spot for the third straight weekend, fighting off the challenge posed by Disney’s Moana. The J.K. Rowling penned adventure added £4.5m, which brings its total to £37.9m. It’s already the fifth biggest film of the year-to-date, just behind Deadpool, and will climb at least two or three places up that list before the end of its run.
Moana opened in second with £2.2m (including £33k from previews). Last year, Disney’s big Christmas animation, The Good Dinosaur, opened with £2.9m on its way to becoming Pixar’s lowest grossing film at £15.1m, so it’s fair to say Moana’s opening is a little disappointing, especially considering its terrific performance in the US. As the main family release, it will still be looking to perform strongly over the Christmas period.
Sully: Miracle On The Hudson opened in third with £1.8m (including £18k from previews), which is Clint Eastwood’s second best opening as a director, behind last year’s American Sniper (£2.5m).
Allied fell to fourth, easing 48% to £672k and after 10 days in cinemas, the Brad Pitt, Marion Cotillard romantic drama has grossed £2.9m.
Polish title, Pitbull: Niebezpieczne Kobiety completed the top five, with an impressive £456k from 104 sites. The title translates as Pitbull: Tough Women and is the follow-up to Pitbull: Nowe Porzadki (Early Orders), which grossed £500k in April.
Outside of the top five, a couple of titles opened in the lower reaches of the top 10. Teen comedy The Edge of Seventeen has had terrific reviews but could only manage £273k in ninth, which included £60k from Wednesday and Thursday previews.
Boxing drama, Bleed For This could only manage £251k in tenth, including £14k from previews.
Overall the box office was down 21% from last weekend and up 20% from the same weekend last year, when the top four films were The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2, The Good Dinosaur, SPECTRE and Bridge of Spies.
Next Weekend
Office Christmas Party is the latest Christmas themed comedy and stars Deadpool's T.J. Miller who attempts to throw an epic Christmas party in order to land a big client and save the day, but the party gets way out of hand. It co-stars Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman and Kate McKinnon, so there’s some substantial comic talent involved. It’s in cinemas on Wednesday
Snowden is the latest film from Oscar winning director, Oliver Stone (Platoon, JFK, Wall Street) and stars Joseph Gordon Levitt as the heroic whistleblower, Edward Snowden. Shailene Woodley and Zachary Quinto co-star in a film which DCM’s Communications Manager Ryan Watson called ‘superb’.
The Birth of a Nation once occupied a prime awards season release date but for a number of reasons slips into cinemas this Friday. Nate Parker writes, directs and stars as Nat Turner, a literate slave and preacher in the antebellum South who orchestrates an uprising.
The Buzz
Silence is the latest film from legendary director, Martin Scorsese and stars Adam Driver and Andrew Garfield as two Jesuit priests in the seventeenth century who face violence and persecution when they travel to Japan to locate their mentor and propagate Christianity. It had its first screenings last week and the US critics have been tweeting their thoughts. Joshua Rothkopf of Time Out New York said ‘it’s absolutely staggering’, Drew McWeeny of Hitfix called it ‘beautiful and heartfelt’, and Bilge Ebiri of The Village Voice tweeted that it was ‘one of Scorsese’s greatest films.’ Eric Kohn of Indiewire wasn’t quite as fulsome in his praise, calling it ‘an expertly crafted, severely morose crisis-of-faith drama.’ We can find out for ourselves on 1 January.
Across The Pond
Moana topped the box office for the second successive weekend, adding $28.4m, which brings its total to $119.9m. Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them stayed in second spot, falling 59% to $18.5m. That brings its total to $183.5, making it the tenth biggest film of the year to date. Arrival took third, falling just 36% to $7.3m, for a new cume of $73.1m. Allied banked $7.1m in fourth and has now grossed $28.9m. Doctor Strange completed the top five, adding $6.5m which brings its total to $215.3m.