| Date | |
|---|---|
| Author | DCM |
| Categories | box Office |
A British film topped the UK box office for the fourth weekend in succession. This time it was the turn of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel with £2.3m on its second weekend on release, an improvement of 5% from last weekend. 2003’s Calendar Girls only managed to gross £1.9m on its second weekend on wide release, which suggests that The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel may get close to that film’s final total of £20.4m. It has now grossed a very impressive £7m after ten days in cinemas.
Despite failing to top the box office for the first time since release, The Woman In Black still took second place with a further £1.9m. This takes its cume total to £17.6m and it looks set to overtake War Horse (£18.3m) as the biggest grossing film of the year so far. As you may have read in the press last week, The Woman In Black is now the most successful British horror film of all time. A terrific result for distributor Momentum and the recently revived Hammer Films.
Action comedy This Means War was the highest new entry with £1.8m, although £300k of that came from previews. That result compares very favourably with other star driven action comedies, The Tourist (£1.3m) and Killers (£1.1m). The next new entry, in sixth place, was raucous teen party comedy Project X. Once again utilising the found footage conceit, the film managed a respectable £562k. Just behind was the only other new entry, the Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston comedy Wanderlust, with £491k. Overall, the top 15 total was up on last weekend and up 6% from the same weekend last year.
Across the pond, Dr. Seuss' The Lorax 3D opened to a huge $70.7m, which is comfortably the best opening of the year and the sixth-highest debut ever for an animated movie. Exit polling indicated that parents and children 12 years of age and under represented 68% of the audience. Teen party comedy Project X came in second with an estimated $20.8m. The audience was 58% male 67% under the age of 25. The winner from last weekend Act of Valor fell 44% to $13.7m for a total of $45.2m. Safe House had another solid weekend, ending in fourth place, dropping 34% to $7.2m. The movie has so far made an impressive $108.2m. Best Picture winner The Artist improved 34% to an estimated $3.9m and after 101 days in cinemas has earned $37.1m. The Top 12 grossed an estimated $153.5m, which is up 27% from the same weekend last year.