| Date | |
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| Author | Zoe Aresti |
The Weekend Round-up
Fast & Furious 7 held on to the top spot adding an impressive £5.4m and after just ten days in cinemas has already become the highest grossing film in the series. It now sits on £26.3m, surpassing Fast & Furious 6’s final total of £25.3m, and it should finish well past £30m, which is a remarkable performance.
Cinderella fell 40% to £1.8m in second and after a productive Easter school holiday period, it’s now on £15.2m. By the end of its run, it will end up very close to Maleficent’s final total of £19.5m, but Angelina Jolie’s film had the benefit of the 3D surcharge.
Home continued to impress in third, falling 35% to £1.5m, and to date has banked £18.4m. It’s the fifth highest grossing film of 2015 so far.
Teen comedy The DUFF was the highest new entry in fourth but, after opening last Monday its total of £892k is heavily boosted by £403k worth of previews.
The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water completed the top five, adding £651k for a cume of £6.5m and over the past week, it surpassed the last SpongeBob movie’s final total of £5.6m.
Outside of the top five, new entry John Wick kicked off with £540k, while Woman In Gold opened to £495k and Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 to £480k.
After Fast & Furious 7’s barnstorming opening weekend, the box office was down 42% from last weekend but encouragingly, it’s up 40% from the same weekend last year, when the biggest films were Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Noah, Rio 2 and Divergent.
Next Weekend
A fantastic cast including Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Noomi Rapace and Jason Clarke battle with Russian accents in Child 44. The only two reviews I’ve been able to find online are from The Daily Star who award the film three stars and state that ‘Tom Hardy is excellent in an over-stuffed thriller’ and Total Film who gave the film four stars and also praise Hardy in ‘a brave, slow-burn of a thriller’.
A Little Chaos is also in cinemas on Friday and this Alan Rickman-directed drama stars Kate Winslet and Matthias Schoenaerts, alongside Rickman.
The Buzz
The Avengers: Age Of Ultron had its first screening for critics in the US on Thursday and the first tweeted reviews were online shortly after. Steven Weintraub of Collider said that it’s ‘loaded with insane action, great character moments and funny dialogue’, Drew Taylor from The Playlist felt that it was ‘darker, weirder and more emotional than the original’ and Peter Sciretta of Slash Film said that it’s ‘bigger, more complex, darker, more action packed than the first film, but ultimately not as much fun’. We only have ten days to wait until we can decide whether we agree with them.
Across The Pond
Fast & Furious 7 comfortably held on to first place, falling 59.5% to $59.6m and after ten days in cinemas has grossed a huge $251.5m. It’s already the highest grossing film in the series in the US and should get close to $350m. Home stayed in second with $18.5m and now has a cume of $129.1m. Nicholas Sparks' adaptation The Longest Ride opened in third with $13m. Get Hard took fourth place with $8.2m and to date has grossed $70.8m. Cinderella completed the top five with $7.1m and now has a cume of $180.7m.