| Date | |
|---|---|
| Author | Mia Blakeney |
Box Office Round-up
Wonka remains at the top spot for its fourth weekend with £6.6m, down just 8% from last weekend. Paul King’s musical has a total to date of £43.7m, overtaking Tom Hooper’s Les Misérables which grossed at £40.8m, and now remains on course to pass The Greatest Showman’s £50.1m to rank in the Top 5 musical films of all time.
Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom also holds strongly in second place, dropping just 9% from its opening weekend to add £1.7m for a total to date of £5.9m. It is on track to become the highest-grossing DC Extended Universe release of the year, requiring only a further £3m to beat current leader The Flash which grossed £8.8m.
Disney’s Wish takes third place with £1m, taking its total up to £9.6m in it’s sixth week, which is up 54% from last weekend and likely due to the continuation of school holidays.
In fourth place comes Michael Mann’s Ferrari, which opened on Boxing Day and grossed £1m over 3 days (taking it to £1.9m to date). This is Mann’s fourth-biggest opening with his top 3 releases all opening with £2.2m: Collateral, Miami Vice and Public Enemies. In the PostTrak exit poll, Ferrari was rated 3.5 stars and a 91% total positive score. Men made up two-thirds of the audience, where about 28% of men rated the film ‘excellent’ and 55% said they would ‘definitely recommend it to friends’.
Anyone But You takes fifth place with £732k over 3 days and £1.2m to date. PostTrak audiences awarded this rom-com 4 stars, with equal appeal across both genders whereby 48% men and 46% women reviewed it as ‘excellent’.
Elysian’s Hayao Miyazaki anime The Boy And The Heron took the sixth spot with a 3-day gross of £683k and £1.6m including previews. This is the second-highest opening of all time for a Japanese film, behind only Pokemon: The First Movie (£2.8m in 2000) and ahead of recent live-action record-holder Godzilla Minus One, which ranks as the fifth-biggest Japanese release overall with £816k.
Additional films in this list include Next Goal Wins, which takes the seventh spot with £424k across 3 days and £843k to date, and The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes is at no.8 in its seventh weekend, adding a further £408k. Its total of £17.4m holds it at No.14 among 2023 releases, on the verge of overtaking Lionsgate’s own John Wick: Chapter 4 (£17.6m).
The overall box office is up 5% from last weekend, and up 12% versus the equivalent weekend in 2022 when Avatar: The Way Of Water remained at the top spot in its third weekend with £7.6m. Year-to-date, 2023 is now 8% ahead of the same period in 2022. The full-year total will be just over £1.05 billion as forecast.
Next Weekend
Night Swim - Forced into early retirement by a degenerative illness, former baseball player Ray Waller moves into a new house with his wife and two children. He hopes that the backyard swimming pool will be fun for the kids and provide physical therapy for himself. However, a dark secret from the home's past soon unleashes a malevolent force that drags the family into the depths of inescapable terror.
The Buzz
With talks about Luca Guadagnino’s upcoming film Queer starting filming this month, there is continued buzz for the long-awaited Challengers, finally releasing on 26 April. Originally set to release back in Q3 2023, the trailer hit the internet back in June 2023 and garnered 9.4m views. Unlike any of his previous films (Call Me By Your Name, Bones & All), Challengers is described as a ‘sports romantic comedy’, featuring an acclaimed cast lead by the hugely popular and two-time Emmy winner Zendaya (Euphoria, Spider-Man: No Way Home), as well as Emmy winner Josh O’Connor (The Crown) and rising star Mike Faist (West Side Story). Poised to be one of the hottest films of the year, we expect the audience to be driven by ABC1 women, standing out as the most efficient film for this audience in H1 alongside Priscilla, Wicked Little Letters and The Colour Purple.