UK Box Office 12th - 14th October

For the second weekend running, Liam Neeson took the UK box office by the scruff of the neck as Taken 2 delivered an impressive £3.7m. The Istanbul-set actioner has now grossed a considerable £14.5m after eleven days and with another instalment surely on the cards, Neeson’s dog must be getting nervous. A great comparison for Taken 2 would be The Bourne Ultimatum, which opened with a similarly impressive £6.6m but grossed a much lower £2.9m on its second weekend on its way to £24m. With that in mind, a final total of £20m-plus for Taken 2 looks almost guaranteed and considering the first Taken only grossed £6.4m, it demonstrates just how much impact the first film made on DVD and television.

In second spot, the highest new entry was Adam Sandler animation Hotel Transylvania 3D with £1.7m.  Distributor, Sony Pictures, have released an autumnal animation twice before (not including last year’s Arthur Christmas) with 2006’s Open Season (£1.7m) and 2009’s Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs (£1.6m) and Hotel Transylvania 3D has outperformed them both. Third spot was taken by Sinister, which had a terrific hold, easing just 12% to £1.3m for a cume of £3.7m. Distributor Momentum are obviously using their 2011 horror hit Insidious as a template and that had a similarly strong second weekend hold, falling just 9% on its way to a final total of £7.1m.

In fourth spot, Looper had another decent weekend with a further £1.2m, taking its cume to £7.6m and it looks set to, at the very least, match District 9’s £9m final total. Two independent films opened at the lower end of the top 10 with Ruby Sparks (£299k, including £11.8k from previews) outperforming On The Road (£219k, including £46k from previews), although Ruby Sparks was on at three times as many locations.  Overall the box office was down 8% from the same weekend last year, although that figure doesn’t take into account almost £2m in previews over the weekend for Madagascar: Europe’s Most Wanted 3D, which will be added to its opening weekend total next week.

In the US, Taken 2 had a drop of 56% to $21.9m in its second weekend and now has an impressive cume of $86.1m. Ben Affleck’s third film as director, Argo, turned universal rave reviews into an impressive debut with $19.5m. Although that’s slightly lower than his last film, The Town ($23.8m), it’s still impressive for a grown up drama about the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. Perhaps surprisingly, exit polling suggested that the audience was 54% women.  Sinister opened to $18m, which is more than recent horror hit, The Possession ($17.7m).  Hotel Transylvania fell just 36% to $17.2m and now has a cume of $102.1m. In fifth spot Kevin James comedy Here Comes the Boom opened with $11.8m.

Source: Rentrak EDI