UK Box Office 24 - 26 May 2013

As is often the case with Bank Holidays, the weekend featured a big Hangover. The Wolfpack returned in The Hangover Part III and topped the UK box office with a cool £5.9m, including £1.1m from previews. That’s more than the first Hangover (£3.2m) but less than The Hangover Part II’s £10.4m (including £2m from previews).

In second spot, Fast & Furious 6 fell a chunky 59% to £3.6m, but after its storming first week, it now stands on £16m and by next weekend will have overtaken Fast Five’s series high of £18.5m. This is an incredible result for a sixth installment.

Family animation, Epic, opened in third with £3.2m, including £1.4m from previews. Compared to the year’s big animation releases, Wreck-It Ralph and The Croods, that’s a little disappointing but with little competition it should have a strong half-term week.

The Great Gatsby fell 42% (after previews have been removed) to £2m and a cume of £8.4m. After just 11 days it has already overtaken the final total of Baz Luhrmann’s last film, Australia (£8.1m).

Star Trek Into Darkness rounded out the top five with £1.9m and a cume of £19.4m. With this week being half-term, there’s a good chance it will have overtaken the first Star Trek film’s final total of £21.4m by the weekend.

Overall the box office was down 6% from last weekend but up 13% from the same weekend last year.

In the US, Fast & Furious 6 repeated its UK success opening with a series high of $96.7m. That’s a full $10m higher than Fast Five’s previous high of $86.2m.

In contrast, The Hangover Part III opened with a series low of $41.8m. That’s less than half The Hangover Part II’s $85.9m debut.

Star Trek Into Darkness fell to third place with $37.3m, which takes its cume to $146.1m. Epic made a perhaps disappointing start in fourth place with $33.5m and Iron Man 3 completed the top five with $19.2m for a gargantuan cume of $367.3m.

One other notable success was Before Midnight, opening in 19th with comfortably the biggest screen average of the weekend ($49.4k).