| Date | |
|---|---|
| Author | Tom Linay |
| Categories | box Office |
The Weekend Round-up
- Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again took money, money, money this weekend, opening top of the box office with £9.7m, making it the second film in two weeks to open with more than £9m. The original Mamma Mia! opened with a three-day total of £5.2m in 2008, so the sequel has opened 86% higher. The first film experienced incredible word-of-mouth on its way to a total over £68m. While this sequel may not hit those heights, a total over £50m looks like a distinct possibility.
- Incredibles 2 had a strong second weekend, falling just 28% to £6.8m. That gives it a 10-day total of £22.4m, already making it the 8th biggest film of 2018 to date and with the school holidays now in swing for the entire country, it will be looking to at least double that total. At the same point in its run, Finding Dory was on £20.2m, so that film’s final total of £43m looks like it could be surpassed.
- Skyscraper came in third, adding £893k, a drop of 39% from last weekend. That takes its total to £3.8m and while it will fall short of Rampage’s final total of £9m is out of reach, a strong school holiday period could see it get up to £6m.
- On its seventh weekend Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom posted a great hold, falling just 25% to £618k. That takes its total to £39.7m and it’s closing in on Peter Rabbit’s final total of £40.8m to become the third biggest film released in 2018.
- The First Purge completed the top five, falling 37% to £507k. That takes its total to £4.5m and it will overtake and The Purge: Anarchy’s final total of £4.6m in the next few days to become the biggest film of the series. That’s a terrific performance, especially when you consider the last film in the series, The Purge: Election Year finished on £2.3m and it looked the series’ popularity was on the wane.
- Outside of the top five, thriller Hotel Artemis opened in sixth with £357k, which includes £32k from previews.
Overall, the box office was up 37% from last weekend and down 11% from the same weekend last year, when the top films were Dunkirk, Despicable Me 3, War For The Planet Of The Apes and Spider-Man: Homecoming.
Next Weekend
- Mission: Impossible - Fallout is the sixth film in the blockbuster action series and is reportedly the best yet. Tom Cruise returns as Ethan Hunt, who along with his IMF team, and some familiar allies, race against time after a mission gone wrong. It’s in cinemas on Wednesday.
- Hotel Transylvania 3: A Monster Vacation is the third film in Adam Sandler’s popular animated series. While on a vacation with his family, Count Dracula makes a romantic connection. Hotel Transylvania 2 grossed £20.7m in the UK, so that’s the target for this film.
The Buzz
The Equalizer 2 is a sequel to the 2014 action-thriller starring Denzel Washington as Robert McCall, a man who serves an unflinching justice for the exploited and oppressed. The sequel opened in the US this past weekend and there were some strong reviews from some of the America’s most revered critics, such as The New York Times’ Manohla Dargis who said ‘like all great actors, Mr. Washington commits to the performance, but every so often he also breathes fire, imbuing a scene with such shocking ferocity and bone-deep moral certitude that everything else falls blissfully away.’ It outperformed the first film on its opening weekend in the US (see below), which bodes well for its release on 17 August in the UK. The first film finished on £6.9m, so that’s the target for this sequel.
Across The Pond
The Equalizer 2 opened in the top spot with $36m, which tops the $34.1m the first film opened with. Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again opened just behind The Equalizer 2 with $35m. That’s about $7m more than the first Mamma Mia! opened with in 2008. Hotel Transylvania 3 came in third, adding $23.8m, which brings its total to $91.7m. Ant-Man and the Wasp fell to fourth, falling 43.3% to $16.5m and a new total of $165m. Incredibles 2 completed the top five, adding $11.9m for a new total of $557.7m.