The winner: The Girl on the Train
Resisting the challenge of Tom Hanks’s globetrotting symbologist in Inferno, The Girl on the Train hangs on to the top spot, with a gentle decline from the previous weekend of 34%. After 12 days, the murder mystery has grossed an impressive £13.7m, which compares with £9.8m for Gone Girl at the same stage of its run. Gone Girl enjoyed a lot of staying power, ending up with £22.4m in the UK – more than double the number it had reached after two weekends.
The runner-up: Inferno
The film franchise adapted from Dan Brown’s novels continues its downward trajectory with the release of Inferno. The Da Vinci Code kicked off the series in 2006 with a debut of £9.50m, on its way to £30.51m. Angels & Demons followed three years later, opening with £6.05m including £939,000 in previews, and ending up with £18.79m. Now Inferno begins with £2.97m – a significant drop from the Angels & Demons number. Based on the performance of the previous film, Inferno looks to be heading for a total of about £11m.
The family film: Storks
When The Lego Movie delivered UK box office of £34.3m (and $469m worldwide) in 2014, Warner Bros announced itself as a power player in animation, up there with Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks and Universal Illumination. Now the pressure is on the studio to deliver again, this time without the benefit of the Lego brand.
Despite the tagline “From the studio that delivered The Lego Movie” and the involvement of Chris Miller and Phil Lord – executive producers here – Storks is struggling to position itself in that lineage. The film has opened with £2.25m, including previews of £974,000. Strip out the previews, and Storks would have debuted in sixth place. The number compares with a debut of £8.05m including previews of £2.16m for The Lego Movie.
One problem Storks faced was DreamWorks Animation’s Trolls, which enjoyed previews on Saturday and Sunday, grossing more than £2m. There is every sign that Trolls is going to prove stiff competition for Storks when it opens on Friday.
The arthouse battle: American Honey v My Scientology Movie
When Universal picked October 14 as its release date for Andrea Arnold’s American Honey, it may have been concerned that Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake would be arriving a week later. But the distributor probably wasn’t paying much attention to a film slated for one week before American Honey: Louis Theroux’s documentary My Scientology Movie.
American Honey debuted with £175,000 from 101 cinemas, including previews of £30,000. This compares with an opening of £161,000 from 82 cinemas including £9,000 in previews for Arnold’s previous feature Wuthering Heights (2011), and £103,000 from 47 cinemas for the earlier Fish Tank. Strip out the previews and American Honey opened lower than Wuthering Heights. When Universal acquired international rights to American Honey, a commercial breakthrough looked on the cards – but it has not transpired so far.
In its second weekend of release, My Scientology Movie delivered £122,000 from 49 cinemas, taking the 10-day tally to £770,000. It seems the film is reaching a younger audience than typically seen for big-screen documentaries, thanks to the popularity of Theroux, who has conquered a new demographic via Netflix. Many cinemas are offering encore showings of the Adam Buxton-hosted Q&A, which went out live to cinemas last Monday from Royal Festival Hall, London.
Recent weeks have seen three documentaries crack £500,000 at the UK box office, boosted by a live event. The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years has reached £1.02m after five weeks; Oasis doc Supersonic is at £668,000 after three weeks. And now we also have My Scientology Movie, which, with £1m, has every chance of matching the Beatles film.
The special event: Miss Saigon
Universal will be congratulating itself for the result achieved by Miss Saigon: 25th Anniversary Performance on Sunday, with a gross of £2.03m. This compares with £551,000 for The Phantom of the Opera: 25th Anniversary Concert in October 2011. That time, the concert played in 255 cinemas against 593 this time, reflecting how much event cinema has expanded in five years.
The record breaker: Bridget Jones’s Baby
On Monday, Bridget Jones’s Baby overtook Bridget Jones’s Diary total of £42m to become the biggest film in the series and the UK’s biggest romcom of all time. Including Monday, Baby has grossed £42.24m, which puts it in sniffing distance of Finding Dory, currently the second biggest grossing film of the year, with £42.25m. (The Jungle Book is the top title, with £46.1m.) Bridget Jones’s Baby is happily coexisting with the female-skewing The Girl on the Train, and does not appear to be facing much competition in the next few weeks.
Spreading the wealth
For only the fifth time this year, six titles posted weekend grosses above £1m: The Girl on the Train, Inferno, Storks, Miss Saigon, Bridget Jones’s Baby and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. In fact, with Trolls, it’s seven films grossing £1m-plus. That’s the greatest spread of wealth since the first weekend of January 2015, when eight films managed box office above £1m.
The future
The arrival of mid-level movies such as Inferno and Storks saw box office rise 2% on the previous frame, but takings were 16% down on the equivalent session from a year ago, when Hotel Transylvania 2, Suffragette and Pan all landed in cinemas. So ends a four-week run during which weekend box office was consistently up on last year. The exhibition sector now has its hoped pinned on Trolls and Paramount’s Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, starring Tom Cruise. There’s also horror sequel Ouija: Origin of Evil. Targeting less mainstream audiences are I, Daniel Blake and Mira Nair’s inspirational, Africa-set true story, The Queen of Katwe.
Top 10 films October 14-16
1. The Girl on the Train, £3,412,472 from 630 sites. Total: £13,654,644
2. Inferno, £2,970,027 from 555 sites (new)
3. Storks, £2,247,038 from 528 sites (new)
4. Miss Saigon: 25th Anniversary Performance, £2,033,031 from 593 sites (new)
5. Bridget Jones’s Baby, £1,888,986 from 575 sites. Total: £41,991,553
6. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, £1,313,861 from 524 sites. Total: £8,763,435
7. Deepwater Horizon, £456,456 from 399 sites. Total: £4,852,229
8. The Magnificent Seven, £212,000 from 309 sites. Total: £5,895,017
9. Finding Dory, £187,951 from 394 sites. Total: £42,251,361
10. American Honey, £175,383 from 101 sites (new)
Other openers
The Golden Age – Bolshoi Ballet, £86,854 from 201 sites
Kochaj!, £29,037 from 50 sites
Gautas Iskvietimas 3, £22,999 from 11 sites
Lock, £9,522 from 11 sites
The Flag, £9,222 from 24 sites (Ireland only)
Tutak Tutak Tutak, £6,972 from six sites
Oru Muthassi Gadha, £2,100 from 15 sites
Kate Plays Christine, £1,477 from seven sites
MSG The Warrior: Lion Heart, £1,475 from five sites
Aatishbaazi Ishq, £579 from two sites
Kavi Ucheshichathu, £530 from two sites
Rekka, £232 from five sites
Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang, £180 from one site
• Thanks to comScore. All figures relate to takings in UK and Ireland cinemas.
