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| Author | Zoe Aresti |
The Weekend Round-up
After taking the top spot thanks to some hefty preview figures last weekend, The LEGO Batman Movie comfortably came out on top without them this weekend. The animated superhero flick fell just 19% to £4.4m, which brings its total to £17.4m. With no major family release until Beauty and the Beast on 17 March it should have a few more strong weekends to come.
Fifty Shades Darker stayed in second, falling 55% to £3.4m. The first film plummeted 66% on its second weekend, so this sequel is holding up more strongly. After 10 days in cinemas it has banked £16.7m.
John Wick is back! He’s way more popular this time too. John Wick: Chapter 2 opened with £2.2m (including £248k from previews). That is enough to already overtake the entire run of the first John Wick, which finished on £1.6m.
Sing also had a strong weekend, falling just 10% to £2.1m, which was enough for fourth. That brings its total to £23.4m and it’s now the second film, after La La Land, to cross £20m in 2017, with The LEGO Batman Movie and Fifty Shades Darker to follow shortly.
Matt Damon fantasy epic, The Great Wall, completed the top five, opening with £1.6m. That’s director, Zhang Yimou’s best opening, eclipsing 2004’s Hero, which kicked off with £1m.
Outside of the top five, inspiration true life drama Hidden Figures opened in sixth with £1.4m (which included £238k from previews), while T2 Trainspotting crossed the £15m mark in seventh.
Lion and La La Land both saw a BAFTA boost, in eighth and ninth respectively, with Lion falling just 8% to £697k. It has now grossed over £8m, showing remarkable resilience over the last few weeks. La La Land cemented its position as the biggest film of 2017 to date and now sits on £28.3m, with the Oscars beckoning.
A big Oscar contender, Moonlight, opened in 10th with £622k, which included £254k from previews. It will be expanding further next weekend, hopefully boosted by a few Oscar wins.
Overall the box office was down 15% from last weekend and up 13% from the same weekend last year, when the top four films were Deadpool, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip, How to Be Single and Goosebumps.
Next Weekend
Patriots Day is director Peter Berg’s second film in less than six months, after September’s excellent Deepwater Horizon. It’s the story of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and the aftermath, which includes the city-wide manhunt to find the terrorists responsible. It has received some strong reviews, with The Playlist saying Berg has ‘made an action film that grabs you by the throat and doesn't let up.’ It’s in cinemas on Thursday.
A Cure for Wellness is the latest film from sometimes inspired visionary Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean, Rango, The Lone Ranger). An ambitious young executive is sent to retrieve his company's CEO from an idyllic but mysterious ‘wellness center’ at a remote location in the Swiss Alps, but soon suspects that the spa's treatments are not what they seem. It has surprisingly received an 18 certificate from the BBFC.
The Buzz
Logan is in cinemas on 1 March and the first reviews are now in. It is, by almost all accounts, the best X-Men movie yet. Robbie Collin in The Telegraph said ‘it’s something no-one could have expected: a creatively risky superhero movie. And it deserves to pay off.’ Time Out said ‘Logan is something rather special: a moving and mournful story of life at the end of the line, and the perfect blockbuster for these embittered times.’ Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian said ‘Logan is a forthright, muscular movie which preserves the X-Men’s strange, exotic idealism.’
Across The Pond
The LEGO Batman Movie finished in the top spot with $32.6m, which brings its total to $97.2m. Fifty Shades Darker fell 56.5% in second, to $20.2m and after 10 days in cinemas it has grossed $88.9m. The Great Wall opened in third with $18.4m, and John Wick Chapter 2 added $16.2m in fourth. The Keanu Reeves actioner has now banked $58.4m. Fist Fight completed the top five, opening with $12.2m.