UK Box Office 7-9 March 2014

300: Rise of An Empire knocked the incumbent, The Lego Movie from the top spot this weekend past, with a debut of £2.76m. This is a strong opening, but it couldn’t surpass the original 300’s £4m opening in 2007. The Lego Movie continued to perform well in second place, taking £1.63m, bringing its cume to a whopping £28.8m in the process.

New release, The Grand Budapest Hotel made a cracking start with £1.5m. Directed by Wes Anderson, this is a huge improvement over his last movie, 2012’s Moonrise Kingdom, which finished with £2.1m and it looks all set to become his highest grossing live-action film in the UK, with The Royal Tenenbaums currently holding that title with £3.3m.

Rounding out the UK top five were Non-Stop and Ride Along, taking £1.49m and £823k respectively. Non-Stop now has a cume of £5.36m after two weeks on release and Ride Along has amassed a cume of £2.83m, also after two weeks on release.

While it didn't come close to matching its predecessor’s US opening weekend ($70.8m), 300: Rise of An Empire still managed to dominate the weekend with $45 million. Mr. Peabody and Sherman took the number two spot on its debut weekend behind 300:Rise of an Empire, taking $32.2m for DreamWorks Animation in the process. Last week’s number one, Non-Stop had to make do with the third place, with a weekend box office of $15.8m, bringing its cume to $52.6m. The US top five was rounded out by The Lego Movie, which took $10.9m (cume of $224.9m) and Son of God, which collected $10.4m giving it a cume of $41.9m.