| Date | |
|---|---|
| Author | DCM |
| Categories | cinema |
The Weekend Round-up
Intelligent, big budget sci-fi returned to the top of the UK box office, almost exactly a year after Gravity scaled the heights. Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar kicked off with £5.4m, which is the sixth highest opening weekend of the year, behind The Lego Movie and ahead of Godzilla. As mentioned above, Gravity is the obvious comparison for Interstellar and Alfonso Cuaron’s space thrill-ride opened with £6.2m, which included £619k from previews, so its Friday to Sunday total of £5.6m is very similar to Interstellar’s and Gravity had the benefit of the 3D ticket premium. Nolan’s last original sci-fi title, Inception opened with £5.9m in 2010 and finished its run on £35.9m, while Gravity finished its run on £32.7m. There’s no guarantee that Interstellar with continue to perform in line with these titles but they are the two most obvious comparisons.
Mr.Turner continued to perform remarkably, increasing 15% from last weekend to £1m and a cume of £2.7m. On Saturday it became director, Mike Leigh’s, highest grossing film of all time after just eight days on general release, overtaking 2005’s Vera Drake (£2.4m). Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles came in fourth, but added another £739k for a strong cume of £12.9m.
Gone Girl added £697k for a cume of £20.6m and is now the fourth highest grossing 18-cert film of all time, behind just American Beauty (£21.4m), Hannibal (£21.6m) and The Wolf Of Wall Street (£22.7m). At the same stage in its run, The Wolf Of Wall Street was on £20.8m, so it’s going to be very close whether Gone Girl can overhaul it. Fury completed the top five, adding a further £674k for a cume of £7.1m.
Overall, the box office was up 4% from last weekend and down 21% from the same weekend last year, which benefitted from preview figures for Gravity.
Next Weekend
The Imitation Game opens on Friday and after winning the audience award at the Toronto Film Festival and its rapturous reception after opening the London Film Festival, it is now an awards frontrunner. Tom Hardy delivers a terrific performance alongside James Gandolfini in The Drop and the third film in the popular Nativity franchise is released. It also has one of the best titles of the year in Nativity 3, Dude Where’s My Donkey?
The Buzz
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 is in cinemas in less than three weeks and Kloe Wells was lucky enough to attend the premiere on Monday and said she ‘loved it’ and it was ‘very tense’. It should repeat Catching Fire’s final total of £34.2m.
Across The Pond
There were two big new releases this weekend and Disney’s latest animation, Big Hero 6 came out on top, opening with $56.2m. That figure is 15% more than the $49m Wreck-It Ralph opened with in 2013 and that film finished on $189.4m, so that will be the lowest target for Big Hero 6. Interstellar opened in second with $47.5m and including two days of previews has grossed $49.7m to date. The movie grossed $13.2m from IMAX cinemas and the audience was split evenly between men (52%) and women, and was 75% over the age of 25. Gone Girl was in third with $6.2m and to date has grossed $145.5m. In fourth, Ouija fell 45% to $5.9m for a cume of $43.3m and Fury completed the top five with $5.6m and a cume of $69.4m.