| Date | |
|---|---|
| Author | Tom Linay |
Weekend Round-up
It’s the Wednesday after the weekend we’ve been waiting for and the great news is that Tenet is in cinemas and has successfully lifted the box office in a way that the entire cinema industry hoped it would. Christopher Nolan’s brain-teasing blockbuster opened with £5.3m from Wednesday to Sunday, which includes £2m from Wednesday and Thursday previews. Including bank holiday Monday, it’s now up to £6.3m. Looking at Christopher Nolan’s other sci-fi blockbusters, Inception opened with £5.9m and Interstellar opened with £5.3m and while these were both from three day openings, it shows that Tenet has brought the box office back to the kind of level we experienced before March. When compared to the rest of 2020, that three day opening of £3.2m is the fourth highest opening weekend of the year to date and the previous highest weekend total for a film post-lockdown was Unhinged with £176k. Tenet is already the 17th biggest film of 2020 to date.
Onward has been in the top two of the box office for every weekend but one since lockdown and was back there again this weekend. It added £185k, up 29% from last weekend and a new post-lockdown high for the title. That takes its total to £6.7m and it has grossed £1.4m of that since 3 July when cinemas re-opened. Another family title came in third as 100% Wolf added £140k, an increase of 31% from last weekend, for a new total of £828k.
Russell Crowe’s Unhinged is now up to £1.2m, after adding £112k over the weekend. It’s now the third biggest film post-lockdown. Pinocchio completed the top five, adding £95k for a new total of £557k. Outside of the top five, Curzon title Hope Gap opened in seventh with £73k including £56k from previews.
On by far the best weekend for the box office since March, the top 15 totalled £6.2m (including Tenet’s previews), which is up 516% from last weekend but more excitingly, only down 29% from the same weekend last year.
Next Weekend
The New Mutants previewed over the weekend but is in cinemas nationwide from Friday. It’s the latest film in the X-Men series and is about five young mutants who are discovering their abilities while held in a secret facility against their will.