The winner: The Girl on the Train
After three weeks at the top spot, Bridget Jones’s Baby finally makes way, knocked aside by the big-screen adaptation of Paula Hawkins’ bestseller, The Girl on the Train. The murder mystery begins in the UK with a sturdy £5.18m, with Wednesday and Thursday previews boosting the total to £6.96m.
The obvious comparison title is Gone Girl, which began in October 2014 with £3.59m plus £517,000 in previews. Ignoring previews, The Girl on the Train has opened 44% bigger than Gone Girl.
Local distributor eOne has reason to be particularly pleased with the outcome. In the US, The Girl on the Train kicked off with $24.5m (£19.5m), which – by rule of thumb – suggests a UK debut at about the £2.5m mark. The achieved result is more than double that. A factor may be the local popularity of the book, whose author moved from Zimbabwe to London in 1989. The transposition of the story to upstate New York does not seem to have dented the film’s appeal in Hawkins’ adopted home market.
The sustained success of Bridget Jones’s Baby this past month may have given eOne some concern, given the female skew on both titles. The flipside is that the distributor could hardly have hoped for a better trailering platform for its film. It’s also the case that success can breed success: a big title can bring the audience back, and reignite enthusiasm for the cinema.
The other winner: My Scientology Movie
When My Scientology Movie, starring and co-written by Louis Theroux, was beaten to the punch by Alex Gibney’s documentary Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, film-makers John Dower and Simon Chinn had reason to be despondent. Gibney’s film premiered to acclaim at Sundance in January 2015 while My Scientology Movie was still in the cutting room, making it a tougher sell to A-list festivals and top distributors. Despite premiering at the London film festival last October, key international sales were not confirmed until May this year.
UK distributor Altitude opted to release the film on the first full weekend of October, 51 weeks after its LFF debut. Any concerns about the fate of the documentary evaporated as soon as tickets went on sale, with key indie venues such as Bristol Watershed, Glasgow film theatre, Manchester Home and London ICA reporting rapid sellouts. My Scientology Movie has opened with a very encouraging £93,000 from 26 cinemas, with previews taking the total up to £107,000.
In addition, a special event screening with a Theroux Q&A was beamed from London’s Royal Festival Hall into 240 cinemas on Monday evening. Altitude reports more than £330,000 for this, including the host venue, taking the four-day total to £438,000. Gibney’s Scientology film grossed £76,000 in the UK over the course of its lifetime.
The survivor: Bridget Jones’s Baby
Adding another £6.52m in the past seven days, Bridget Jones’s Baby continues its phenomenal run, with a cumulative total of £37.87m after 24 days. That puts it ahead of the lifetime total of 2004’s Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (£36.m), behind only 2001’s Bridget Jones’s Diary (£42.1m) in the all-time league table of romantic comedies at the UK box office. Baby saw its steepest weekly decline to date – 38% – at the weekend, but any drop under 40% is generally considered a decent hold, and the film faced formidable new competition with the arrival of The Girl on the Train. Including Monday’s takings, Baby has now overtaken Deadpool (£37.9m) to become the third biggest hit of 2016, behind only The Jungle Book (£46.1m) and Finding Dory (£42m)
Of course, adjusted for inflation, Baby is still behind the Bridget franchise’s previous entries. Average cinema ticket prices rose by 74% since 2001, and by 61% since 2004. Adjusted for inflation to current prices, the lifetime grosses of the earlier Bridget movies would be £73.1m and £57.8m.
The disappointments
Landing in seventh place, John Michael McDonagh’s War on Everyone delivered £188,000 from 203 cinemas, including previews of £40,000 – yielding a screen average of just £924, or £725 if previews are left out of the weekend total. McDonagh’s previous film Calvary began its run in April 2014 with £571,000 from 150 venues, including previews of £6,500. It’s worth noting that £295,000 of that total came from Ireland, which is always included in the UK box office totals. Although McDonagh remains popular in Ireland, his new film’s New Mexico setting means that it doesn’t have the same particular local appeal there as his previous films.
In July 2011, McDonagh’s The Guard opened first in Ireland, debuting with £474,000 from 71 cinemas, including £72,000 in previews. Six weeks later, it kicked off in the UK with £164,000 from 60 venues. Lifetime total was a combined £4.61m.
With its US setting and international cast led by Alexander Skarsgård, War on Everyone is notionally a more commercial film from McDonagh. The UK and Ireland grosses, at least, suggest otherwise.
War on Everyone’s result looks positively muscular next to Blood Father, the latest action thriller starring Mel Gibson. That one landed in 17th place with £69,000 from 117 cinemas, yielding a £588 average.
The single-screen showcase: 13th
Fans of watching documentaries on the big screen are in for a disappointment if they hope to see Ava DuVernay’s 13th, when they don’t live or work near London. The film, which is available on Netflix, is playing an exclusive one-week engagement at the Bertha DocHouse at London’s Curzon Bloomsbury – a run that qualifies it for the Bafta film awards – following its special presentation as part of the London film festival last Thursday. Other cinemas seeking to book it report having been rebuffed. The Selma director’s acclaimed investigation into US mass incarceration of African Americans grossed £455 at the weekend. The film ends its run on Thursday.
The personal milestone: The BFG
Now in its 12th week of release, Steven Spielberg’s The BFG passed the £30m barrier at the weekend – the ninth film to do so this year, following The Jungle Book, Finding Dory, Bridget Jones’s Baby, Deadpool, Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, Captain America: Civil War, The Secret Life of Pets and Suicide Squad. The UK is the runaway winning territory for The BFG, relative to the size of its overall cinema market. US gross was a disappointing $55m.
The future
Thanks to the arrival of The Girl on the Train, takings at the weekend were overall 9% up on the previous frame, and 56% up on the equivalent session from 2015, when The Martian stayed at the top spot, fending off challenges from the newly released Sicario and The Walk. Box office has now been up on the equivalent 2015 weekends for four weeks in a row. Cinema owners have hopes pinned this weekend on the arrival of Ron Howard’s Inferno, the third in the series that began with The Da Vinci Code. Warners’ animation division presents Storks, which it hopes can repeat – or at least vaguely approach – the stellar success of The Lego Movie. Alternatives include Andrea Arnold’s critically acclaimed Cannes competitor American Honey, starring newcomer Sasha Lane opposite Shia LaBeouf.
Top 10 films October 7-9
1. The Girl on the Train, £6,957,945 from 612 sites (new)
2. Bridget Jones’s Baby, £2,997,832 from 616 sites. Total: £37,866,152
3. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, £2,224,702 from 572 sites. Total: £6,717,045
4. Deepwater Horizon, £987,694 from 486 sites. Total: £3,823,467
5. The Magnificent Seven, £511,539 from 445 sites. Total: £5,371,104
6. Finding Dory, £282,031 from 456 sites. Total: £42,030,294
7. War on Everyone, £187,564 from 203 sites (new)
8. Tristan Und Isolde – Met Opera, £178,283 from 172 sites (live event)
9. Kubo and the Two Strings, £131,951 from 414 sites. Total: £2,887,889
10. Don’t Breathe, £128,090 from 171 sites. Total: £3,574,940
Other openers
My Scientology Movie, £106,720 (including £13,404 previews) from 26 sites
Remo, £74,132 from 35 sites
Blood Father, £68,808 from 117 sites
I Belonged to You, £28,058 from 10 sites
Mirzya, £16,206 from 39 sites
The Greasy Strangler, £9,063 from nine sites
Bir Baba Hindu, £5,120 from three sites
Mattress Men, £3,296 from six sites (Ireland only)
Mission Milano, £2,381 from seven sites
The Guv’nor, £762 from 10 sites
Oozham, £502 from three sites
The 13th, £455 from one site
- Thanks to comScore. All figures relate to takings in UK and Ireland cinemas.
