| Date | |
|---|---|
| Author | Tom Linay |
The Weekend Round-up
- Stephen Merchant’s solo directorial debut Fighting With My Family gave him his first chart-topper, as it suplexed the competition, opening with £2m, which includes £398k from Wednesday and Thursday previews. Merchant’s only other feature film director credit was on 2010’s Cemetery Junction, which opened with £641k and finished on £1.5m.
- After three consecutive weeks in the top spot, The LEGO Movie 2 fell to second place. It added £1.4m, a drop of 43%, which takes its total to £15.8m. It’s currently in a tight race with the other big February animation, How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (see below), which is good, because it’s going to fall well short of The LEGO Movie (£34.4m) and The LEGO Batman Movie (£27.4m).
- Instant Family continues to perform strongly, falling just 35% from last weekend to £1.1m. That takes its total to over £8m, which makes it one of the biggest comedies to come out of the US since Pitch Perfect 3 in 2017.
- How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World came in fourth, adding £1m, which takes its total to £17.3m. This week it will overtake the final total of the first How To Train Your Dragon film (£17.4m), but the second film in the series is out of reach on £27.6m.
- After picking up the best picture Oscar last weekend, Green Book saw a sizeable box office bump, increasing on last weekend’s total by 57%. It added £743k, which takes its total to £7.4m and it will now be eyeing a total close to £10m by the end of its run.
- Outside of the top five, Keira Knightley drama The Aftermath opened in sixth with £596k, which is a shade higher than the three-day opening weekend of Colette, which delivered £561k in January.
Overall the box office is down 4% from last weekend and down 25% from the same weekend last year when the top films were Black Panther, Red Sparrow, The Greatest Showman and Game Night.
Next Weekend
- Captain Marvel is the first superhero blockbuster of 2019. Brie Larson plays Carol Danvers, who becomes one of the universe's most powerful heroes when Earth is caught in the middle of a galactic war between two alien races.
- Miss Bala is a thriller starring Gina Rodriguez as Gloria, who finds a power she never knew she had when she is drawn into a dangerous world of cross-border crime.
- The Kindergarten Teacher is a drama starring Maggie Gyllenhaal as a kindergarten teacher in New York who becomes obsessed with one of her students whom she believes is a child prodigy.
The Buzz
Wild Rose is looking like one of the stand-out British films of the first half of 2019. Rising star, Jessie Buckley plays a musician from Glasgow who dreams of becoming a Nashville star. It had its Scottish premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival last week and early reviews suggest it could be a hit. Sight and Sound said ‘when the film sings, it soars - Jessie Buckley was born to be a star’ and The Hollywood Reporter called it ‘entirely delightful, fresh as a Scottish summer evening’. It’s in UK cinemas on 12 April.
Across The Pond
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World held on to the top spot, falling 45% in its second weekend to $30m, which takes its total to $97.6m. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral came in second, opening with $27.1m, which is the fourth largest in the series. Alita: Battle Angel added $7m in third place, taking its total to $72.2m. The LEGO Movie 2 came in fourth, adding $6.6m as it edges closer to $100m. It now sits on $91.6m. Green Book saw a big Oscar bump, increasing 121% on last weekend, adding $4.7m for a new total of $75.9m.