Endgame still HUGE

The Weekend Round-up

• Avengers: Endgame is a genuine cultural phenomenon. On its second weekend in cinemas the record-smashing Marvel blockbuster added £14.3m from Friday to Sunday, which is the second largest second weekend ever, behind only Skyfall (£16.1m). Including Monday, Endgame has grossed £73.5m, overtaking Infinity War’s final total of £70.8m and making it Marvel’s biggest film of all-time and the eighth biggest film of all time in the UK. It has a strong chance of becoming only the third film in history to cross the £100m mark, after Skyfall (£103.2m) and Star Wars: The Force Awakens (£123.2m).
• Charlize Theron and Seth Rogen comedy, Long Shot opened in second with £865k from Friday to Sunday (including £41k from previews), adding a further £254k on Monday for a four-day total of £1.1m. Director, Jonathan Levine’s last film was Amy Schumer, Goldie Hawn comedy, Snatched, and that opened with £841k in May 2017 and finished on £2.1m, which Long Shot has a good chance of beating.
• Films in The Conjuring universe have been big business in recent years but The Curse Of La Llorona couldn’t continue the streak as it opened with £609k from Friday to Sunday (including £18k from previews). It added a further £160k on Monday, so to date it has banked £770k. The last spin-off film in this universe was September 2018’s The Nun, which opened with £4.1m, including £664k from previews. 
• Tolkien opened in fourth with £555k from Friday to Sunday and added another £193k on Monday for a four-day total of £747k.
• A Dog’s Journey completed the top five, opening with £499k from Friday to Sunday and then adding an impressive £314k on bank holiday Monday. That gives it a four-day total of £813k. Last year A Dog’s Purpose opened with £1.3m on its way to £3.2m, so this new story is so far falling a little way short.

Overall the box office is down 62% from last weekend and up 31% from the same weekend last year when the top films were Avengers: Infinity War, I Feel Pretty, A Quiet Place ­and The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society.

Next Weekend

• Pokemon Detective Pikachu stars Ryan Reynolds as the lovable yellow Pikachu. In a world where people collect Pokémon to do battle, a boy comes across an intelligent talking Pikachu who seeks to be a detective.
• The Hustle is a remake of the Steve Martin and Michael Caine comedy, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson star as female scam artists, one low rent and the other high class, who team up to take down the dirty rotten men who have wronged them.
• The Corrupted is a London-set drama starring Sam Claflin. Set ahead of the 2012 Olympics, the film follows Liam (Claflin), an ex-con trying to win back the love and trust of his family but he gets drawn back into the criminal underworld.
• High Life is a sci-fi drama from revered French director Claire Denis. Robert Pattinson and Juliet Binoche star in this tale of a father and his daughter who struggle to survive in deep space where they live in isolation.

The Buzz

Danny Boyle, Richard Curtis and the music of The Beatles; it sounds like a match made in box office heaven. Yesterday stars Himesh Patel as a singer-songwriter who is the only person on Earth who can remember The Beatles. It had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival at the weekend and the first reviews are now being published. Robbie Collin in The Telegraph gave it four stars saying ‘Yesterday may be built on the hits of old, but it finds its own genially infectious groove.’ Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian also gave it four stars saying ‘the puppyish zest and fun summoned up by Curtis and Boyle carry it along’. Time Out went four stars too, asking ‘how can you resist such a full-throated, playful celebration of some of the best songs ever recorded? You don't.’ The U.S. critics weren’t quite as kind but with Boyle and Curtis in charge this was always going to have more of an appeal to a UK audiences. It’s in cinemas on 28 June.

Across The Pond

Avengers: Endgame topped the box office again with $147.4m. That’s the second largest second weekend of all time, behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ $149.2m. That takes Endgame’s total to $621.3m and it looks like it’s going to be either the biggest or second biggest film of all time in the US by the end of its run. Dennis Quaid thriller, The Intruder opened in second with $10.9m. It’s out in the UK on 12 July. Long Shot opened in third with $9.7m and UglyDolls opened in fourth with $8.6m. Captain Marvel completed the top five, adding $4.2m for a new total of $420.7m.