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| Author | Zoe Aresti |
The Weekend Round-up
As expected, almost a year after The Force Awakens opened in top spot, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story comfortably topped the box office with £17.3m. That’s the biggest opening weekend total of the year, but it includes £4.1m from Thursday previews, and the Friday to Sunday total of £13.2m is lower than Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’s opening weekend of £15.3m.
Last year, The Force Awakens had a four-day opening of £34m, which included the biggest Friday to Sunday weekend of all time (£24.3m).
Moana stayed in second, falling 26% to £1.4m. It has now grossed £6.8m and will be hoping to at least double that total over the holiday period.
After topping the box office for four consecutive weekends, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them fell to third, but held up surprisingly well in the face of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. It added £1.4m, which brings its total to £44.9m and it’s now the third biggest film of 2016. It should easily have enough legs to overtake The Jungle Book, in second, by the end of the year.
Sully: Miracle on the Hudson added £615k in fourth, which brings its total to £5.7m. It is now director, Clint Eastwood’s third best performing film in the UK, behind Gran Torino (£8.3m) and American Sniper (£13.7m).
Office Christmas Party completed the top five, adding £543k, bringing its total to £2.3m.
Outside of the top five, festive 1946 favourite, It’s a Wonderful Life, came snowballing back into the top 10 with £86k.
Overall the box office was up 143% from last weekend and down 43% from the same weekend last year, when the top four films were Star Wars: The Force Awakens,
Next Weekend
Ballerina is an animation about an orphan girl in 19th Century France, who dreams of becoming a ballerina and flees rural Brittany for Paris, where she passes for someone else and accedes to the position of pupil at the Grand Opera house. Elle Fanning and Dane DeHaan feature in the voice cast and it was in cinemas on Monday (19 December).
Passengers is a big-budget sci-fi from Morten Tyldum, director of The Imitation Game. A spacecraft traveling to a distant colony planet and transporting thousands of people has a malfunction in its sleep chambers. As a result, two passengers are awakened 90 years early. The two passengers are played by two of the biggest stars on the planet, Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence and It’s in cinemas on today (21 December).
The Buzz
Moonlight is shaping up to be La La Land’s main competition for next year’s major awards. Last week, Barry Jenkins’ drama received six Golden Globe nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, and it has already been named the best film of the year by a host of prominent critics. It has an almost unprecedented score of 99 on Metacritic, from 48 reviews and is released in the UK on 17 February 2017.
Across The Pond
After just three days on release Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is already the 15th highest grossing film of 2016. It opened with $155m and will add plenty more over the holiday period. Moana took second, adding $12.7m, which brings its total to $162.9m. Office Christmas Party fell 50% in third to $8.6m, and after 10 days in cinemas has banked $31.6m. Will Smith drama, Collateral Beauty, opened in fourth with $7.1m and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them completed the top five, adding $5.1m for a brand new cume of $207.7m.