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The Weekend Round-up
- It looks like a spoonful of Poppins helps the festive season go down for the British public, as Mary Poppins Returns continues to be the biggest (and best) film of the jolly holiday, adding £7.4m to take its total to £23.2m under the lovely London sky (and the rest of the country). This is a much better trajectory than Disney’s last two live-action releases, Nutcracker and The Four Realms, which finished its run on £5.6m, and A Wrinkle in Time, which finished on £3m. Mary Poppins Returns is still a long way off stepping in time with Beauty and the Beast’s final total of £72m. Poppins and co are still early on their run however and there’s nowhere to go but up.
- Bumblebee was the first new entry to last weekend’s top ten, buzzing in to second place with £5.1m. This is higher than the last entry in the Transformers franchise, Transformers: The Last Knight, which opened with £4.6m, but around half of Transformers: Age of Extinction, which had the highest opening weekend of the franchise.
- Aquaman sunk down to third place, with the aquatic adventure added £2.5m to take its total to £13.4m. The last entry into the DCEU, Justice League, finished on £17.4m, and so Aquaman looks likely to easily swim past that total in the upcoming weeks, aiming its torpedo at Wonder Woman’s final total of £22.1m.
- Fourth place sees another new entry to the top ten, with Will Ferrell and John C Reilly outfit Holmes & Watson opening its casebook with £1.4m. This is just below the £1.7m grossed in Step Brothers’ opening weekend, although the Baker Street bonanza may have benefited from a slight festive boost.
- Fifth place is also occupied by a John C Reilly leading film, with Ralph Breaks The Internet adding £1.3m in it’s fifth week to take its total to £13.3m. The original Wreck-It Ralph finished on £23.8m, so the follow up is likely to finish second in this Sugar Rush race.
- Outside of the top five, animated effort Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse is still drawing punters to their friendly neighbourhood cinemas and The Grinch is still stealing the hearts of the public, adding £1m and £753.5k respectively, whereas Bohemian Rhapsody continued its never-ending tour of UK cinemas in eighth place, now boasting a total of £47.2m.
Next Weekend
- Life Itself stars Oscar Isaac and Olivia Wilde. As a young New York couple goes from college romance to marriage and the birth of their first child, the unexpected twists of their journey create reverberations that echo over continents and through lifetimes.
The Buzz
- Green Book is a heart-warming double-hander starring the fantastic Viggo Mortenson and Mahershala Ali. Joshua Rothkopf wrote in Time Out New York “Call this actors' duet sentimental and simplistic at your own peril. Green Book may well move you, possibly to tears, at the thought of real social change and kindness (at a time when we need it badly).” Adam Graham corroborated this in the Detroit News, writing “This is an expertly-acted, perfectly telegraphed message movie that knows the buttons it's pushing, and pushes them all, right on cue. This is not a knock against it, it's a compliment.” Green Book is released in UK cinemas on 1 February.
Across The Pond
Aquaman clung on to the top spot over the final weekend of 2018, adding $52.1m to take it’s cumulative total to $189,4m. Mary Poppins Returns kept hold of second place by an umbrella, adding $28.4m to take it’s total to $99.3m Bumblebee also maintained the same position as last week, adding $20.9m in third place. Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse clinged on to fourth spot, adding $18.8m in it’s third week, whereas The Mule added $12.2m to complete the top five.