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The Weekend Round-up
- Mary Poppins Returns proved that it wasn’t just festive cheer bringing punters (and penguins) to the cinema, adding a bumper £4.4m to take its cumulative total to a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious £34.3m. The extravaganza is still likely to fall short of Beauty and the Beast’s final total of £72m, unless the British public send their Christmas pocket money to the place where lost things go and check out Blunt and co in coming weeks.
- The Favourite was the UK public’s second favourite film of the weekend and the first new entry to the top ten, opening with £3.98m in a new opening week record for director Yorgos Lanthimos, poaching The Killing Of A Sacred Deer’s opening total of £288k. This number will only continue to grow thanks to the publicity garnered by Olivia Colman’s Golden Globe win last night.
- Aquaman kept its barnacle-like grip on third place, adding a wave of £1.9m over the weekend to take its total to £18.2m. This has leapfrogged Justice League’s final total of £17.4m, and there’s no reason why it couldn’t overtake Wonder Woman’s final total of £22.1m to be the biggest DCEU film of the last few years.
- Andre Rieu’s New Year Concert From Sydney benefited from the British public’s collective new year’s resolution to become more cultured, amassing an impressive £1.74m.
- Bumblebee hovered down to fifth this week, which is a sizeable drop of 66%, proving once and for all that violins beat Transformers in the ultimate battle of Christmas gifts for children. The film has now amassed £9.1m and so is nailed on to top Transformers: The Last Knight’s final total of £9.5m
- Outside of the top five, animation is still having a strong showing throughout the country, with Ralph Breaks the Internet and Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse only just missing out on the top 5, whereas Bohemian Rhapsody continues to find somebody to love week in week out, adding £725k. Holmes & Watson dropped down to tenth position, adding £351k in a drop of 72%.
Overall, the box office is down 12% from last weekend and ranks 19th out of the latest 52 weekends. It is down just 1% versus the same weekend last year, at which point Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle was No.1 in its third weekend of release, overtaking Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
Next Weekend
- Colette stars Kiera Knightley in the title role. Colette pens a semi-autobiographical novel, about a brazen country girl named Claudine that becomes a bestseller and a cultural sensation.
- Stan & Ollie stars Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly as movie icons Lauerl & Hardy, in a heart-warming story of what would become the pair's triumphant farewell tour.
- The Frontrunner follows the rise and fall of Senator Hart, who was considered the overwhelming front runner for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination when his campaign was side-lined by the story of an extramarital relationship with Donna Rice.
- The Upside is director Neil Burger's heartfelt comedy about a recently paroled ex-convict (Kevin Hart) who strikes up an unlikely friendship with a paralyzed billionaire (Bryan Cranston).
The Buzz
Destroyer sees Nicole Kidman tackle a much different role than we are used to from the icon, and is drawing rave reviews from critics. Joe Morgenstern writes in the Wall Street Journal “[Nicole Kidman] is a force, and a relentless one, but she does what she does with the unswerving focus of a Terminator gone rogue”, with Anthony Lane adding in the New Yorker “[Kidman] does lunge without demur into the action, toting an automatic rifle sufficiently massive to foil a bank job. I don’t think that Kidman did that when she played Virginia Woolf, in “The Hours” (2002), but I can’t help wishing she had.” Destroyer is released in UK cinemas on 25 January.
Across The Pond
Aquaman was once again king across the Ocean, adding $30.7m to take its cumulative total to $279.7m. In second place comes new entry Escape Room, which opened with $18m, with Mary Poppins Returns following close behind with $15.8m, which takes its total to $138.7m. Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse web is swinging lower this week, but swinging nonetheless, adding $13m to take its total to $133.9m. The top five was completed by Bumblebee, which added a solid (metal) $12.8m to take its total to $97m.