| Date | |
|---|---|
| Author | Tom Linay |
The Weekend Round-up
- Last weekend, The Lion King opened with the second biggest weekend of 2019 and this weekend it delivered again, falling just 36% to £10.7m. That takes its total after just 10 days in cinemas to £36.7m. It has already overtaken Aladdin to be the fourth biggest film if 2019 so far and this week will overtake Captain Marvel (£39.5m) to be the third biggest film of the year so far. It’s tracking just 8% behind Beauty And The Beast at the same stage of its run and that film went on to reach £72.4m..
- Toy Story 4 had a sensational weekend in second, falling just 7% to £2.5m. That was enough to take it over the £50m mark, the second film this year to reach that milestone, after Avengers: Endgame. It now sits on £51.6m and with a couple more holds like that it could get over £60m.
- Spider-Man: Far From Home also had a successful weekend, falling just 26% to £1.7m. It’s now on £30.6m and today it should overtake Spider-Man: Homecoming’s final total of £30.7m and it looks nailed on to overtake Spider-Man 3’s final total of £33.6m to become the biggest Spider-Man film of all-time at the UK box office.
- Andre Rieu’s 2019 Maastricht Concert – Shall We Dance? came in fourth with £1.5m across Saturday and Sunday. This annual release is always one of the most popular events in the event cinema calendar and so it proved once again.
- Yesterday again held up well, falling just 21% to £613k. That takes its total to £11.1m and it has been consistently plugging away since its release in late-June.
- Outside the top five, a couple of new releases opened in the lower reaches of the top 10. BBC children’s show made the leap to the big screen with Horrible Histories: The Movie – Rotten Romans which opened with £609k, including £25k from previews. Historical drama The Current War opened eighth with £455k.
Overall the box office is down 21% from last weekend and down 25% from the same weekend last year when the top films were Mission: Impossible – Fallout, Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again, Incredibles 2 and Hotel Transylvania 3: A Monster Vacation.
Next Weekend
- Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw is a spin-off from the Fast & Furious series featuring two of the stand-out characters in their own film. Lawman Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and outcast Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) form an unlikely alliance when a cyber-genetically enhanced villain (Idris Elba) threatens the future of humanity.
- The Angry Birds Movie 2 is a sequel to the 2016 animation. This time around the flightless birds and scheming green pigs take their beef to the next level and once again the voice cast is a who’s who of US comedy talent, including Awkwafina, Tiffany Haddish, Bill Hader, Maya Rudolph, Danny McBride and Jason Sudeikis.
The Buzz
Joker is shaping up to be one of the most distinctive comic book films in years. Joaquin Phoenix plays a failed stand-up comedian who is driven insane and becomes a psychopathic murderer. Excitingly, the film has been selected to play in competition at the Venice Film Festival and it’s also been selected for the Toronto Intenational Film Festival (TIFF). TIFF artistic director, Cameron Bailey, has been talking up the film’s Oscar chances, saying ‘it does take the character and a lot of the elements that we know from Joker’s backstory. But it’s an original story that allows the filmmakers to go in an original direction. It’s got some real dark tones to it, but it’s just grounded in this career-best career performance by Joaquin Phoenix. I think all the awards bodies will be taking notice.’ Warner Bros have also confirmed the film will be R-rated (15 cert). It’s in UK cinemas on 4 October.
Across The Pond
The Lion King topped the box office in the US for a second successive weekend adding $75.5m, which is a pretty hefty drop of 61%. That takes its total to the remake of the animated classic dipped -60.6% in its sophomore frame as the film's domestic total now stands at $350.8m. Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood opened with $40.4m, which makes it the biggest opening for one of his films. Spider-Man: Far from Home added $12.2m in third, which takes its total to $344.5m. Toy Story 4 came in fourth, adding $9.9m, which takes its total to $395.6m. Crawl completed the top five, adding $4m for a new total of $31.5m.