| Date | |
|---|---|
| Author | DCM |
| Categories | box Office |
The Weekend Round-up
- The British public love The LEGO Movie 2 to pieces, as it opened at the top of the box office this weekend with £4.0m. This is 32% lower than the 3-day opening of the first instalment in 2014 (£5.9m excluding previews), but 92% ahead of the last instalment of the franchise, The LEGO Ninjago Movie (£2.0m excluding previews), showing the franchise is still a good fit for cinema. The sequel looks to be a chip off the old block of the original, with its well-built total of £34m in sights.
- How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World hovered down to second place over the weekend, but the franchise’s fire is still burning as the threequel is tracking 54% ahead of the previous instalment.
- Third place sees another new entry, with the big-eyed British public flocking to the cinema to see Alita: Battle Angel open with £3.1m. This is ahead of Ghost in the Shell’s opening total of £2.3m.
- Green Book dropped down to fourth place in its second week, however only seeing a drop of 14%. Mahershala Ali’s BAFTA win last night should give the film a boost in the coming week.
- Glass is close to shattering M Night Shyamalan box office records in fifth place. Split and Unbreakable achieved lifetime box office of £11.3m and £11.6m respectively,and Glass is now close to crossing the £10m mark.
- Outside of the top 10, Mary Queen of Scots added £560.6k, and Escape Room dropped 42% in its second weekend. Kenneth Branagh Shakespearean biopic All Is True opened in tenth place with £266.8k.
Continuing a positive February momentum in the run-up to half-term holidays next week, the overall box office is up 5% from last weekend and ranks 25th out of the latest 52 weekends. It is down 12% versus the same weekend last year, at which point Fifty Shades Freed opened with £6.1m. The year to date, 2019, is 16% behind 2018.
Next Weekend
- Instant Family stars Rose Byrne and Mark Wahlberg. When Pete and Ellie decide to start a family, they stumble into the world of foster care adoption. They hope to take in one small child but when they meet three siblings, they find themselves speeding from zero to three kids overnight.
- The Kid Who Would be King is Joe Cornish’s follow up to Attack the Block. Alex thinks he's just another nobody, until he stumbles upon the mythical Sword in the Stone, Excalibur. Now, he must unite his friends and enemies into a band of knights and, together with the wizard Merlin, take on the wicked enchantress Morgana.
- A Private War stars Rosamund Pike as Marie Colvin. In a world where journalism is under attack, Marie Colvin is one of the most celebrated war correspondents of our time.
- Happy Death Day 2U is the sequel to 2017’s Happy Death Day. This time, our hero Tree discovers that dying over and over was surprisingly easier than the dangers that lie ahead.
The Buzz
Fighting With My Family is Stephen Merchant’s solo directorial debut and follows the true-life story of the youngest women’s champion in WWE history, Paige. Joshua Rothkopf in Time Out writes ‘The boastful, performative nature of WWE, spiked with mini dramas and constant role-playing, becomes the lingua franca of an atypical household in Fighting with My Family, the sweetest of comedies despite a sizable number of body slams.’ Kate Erbland praises lead Florence Pugh in IndieWire, writing ‘The beats of Fighting With My Family are comfortingly familiar, and the soap opera pomp of the wrestling world is eye-popping to both fans and neophytes alike, but it's Pugh that is always fresh, surprising, and wily.’ Fighting With My Family is released in UK cinemas on 27 February.
Across The Pond
The Lego Movie 2 topped the box office over in the US with an opening total of $34.4m. New entry What Men Want opened in second place with $19m, whereas Liam Neeson outfit Cold Pursuit opened with $10.8m in third place. The Upside dropped down to fourth place with a new total of $85.8m, and the top five is completed by Glass, which now has a running total of $98.5m.