UK Box Office 30 Nov - 2 Dec 2012

Bond is back! Well, back at the top of the UK box office. Another £2.3m on Skyfall's sixth weekend of release for the all-conquering blockbuster takes it to £94.1m and it has now become the UK’s highest grossing film of all time, beating Avatar. An incredible achievement from one of the UK’s best loved film franchises. The film that kept Skyfall from the top spot for the previous two weekends was relegated to second place as The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 fell 59% to £2.2m. It still managed to surpass Breaking Dawn Part 1’s final total of £31.1m to become the biggest grossing Twilight film. It now stands on £31.4m and a final total of around £35m looks likely.

In third place was this week’s highest new entry and the year’s big Christmas animation, Rise Of The Guardians 3D.  A healthy £2m opening puts it on almost on a par with last year’s big Christmas themed film, Arthur Christmas, which opened with £2.1m. With three further weekends before Christmas, expect it to improve on that opening figure quite considerably. 42.5% of its box office came from 3D presentations. Fourth spot was taken by the other Christmas film currently on general release, Nativity 2: Danger In The Manger, which fell 25% from last weekend to £1.2m and a cume of £3.2m.

The top 5 was rounded out by the fantastic romantic-comedy, Silver Linings Playbook. Strong word of mouth is obviously kicking in for this title as a drop of just 23% from last weekend (not including previews) saw it to £749k and a cume of £2.7m. Expect it to feature heavily in next week’s Golden Globe nominations.  In sixth spot was another new entry with all-star Dickens adaptation, Great Expectations, with a debut of £545k.

Other notable new entries were Alex Cross in 11th place with £227k and darkly comic Brit film, Sightseers in 12th place with £214k (including £28k from previews). Overall the box office was up 23% from the same weekend last year, which saw the debuts of Happy Feet 2 and Hugo.

In the US, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 once again ruled the roost with $17.4m to take its cume to $254.6m, which is just $1m behind the final total of New Moon. Skyfall was only just behind in second with a further $17m taking its total to an incredibly impressive $246m. Spielberg’s awards hopeful, Lincoln was in third place with $13.5m for a cume of $83.7m, which is ahead of both of his other 2011 films Tintin ($77.6m) and War Horse ($79.9m). Rise of the Guardians eased 43% with $13.5m for a total of $48.9m. Life of Pi rounded out the top 5 with $12m.

Source: Rentrak EDI