The winner
With just shy of £40m earned from 14 days on release, Toy Story 3 is already earning its place in the record books. A week ago, it stood at number 24 in the chart recording the UK's all-time biggest animated hits. Seven days later, and it has overtaken 21 of those titles, including such monster hits as Shrek The Third (£38.74m), The Simpsons Movie (£38.66m), Monsters, Inc (£37.91m) and Finding Nemo (£37.36m). In the animated hall of fame, Toy Story 3 now stands in third place, behind the lifetime totals of only Shrek 2 (£48.24m) and Toy Story 2 (£44.31m). Since its current rate of decline is modest, it is almost certain to snatch the all-time animated crown by this time next week.
Toy Story 3's particularly aggressive preview strategy makes comparisons with other top performers tricky, but no other film has grossed so much after its second weekend of play. The last Harry Potter picture, Half-Blood Prince, stood at £33.07m after two weekends, while notable early achiever Quantum Of Solace had reached £31.45m. It's rare for films to crack £30m within two weekends of release – no Lord Of The Rings or Pirates Of The Caribbean movie managed it. Toy Story 3 is already the third biggest hit of the past 12 months, behind only Avatar and Alice In Wonderland. It will very soon overtake Alice to become the second biggest.
Pixar's 11th straight hit has benefited hugely from the availability of the family audience on weekdays: while it grossed a robust £8.12m on the weekend (Friday-Sunday), its cumulative gross rose an astonishing £18.6m over the seven days. With five weeks of the school holiday yet to go, the film is clearly headed for a big, big number. The only grey spot on its horizon is fresh competition for 3D screens, with the arrival this week of both Cats & Dogs 2: The Revenge Of Kitty Galore and Step Up 3D. (See "The future", below.)
The retro battle
The face-off between revived retro properties The A-Team and The Karate Kid was always going to be interesting. The former was a genuine TV ratings smash in the mid-80s, fondly remembered in some quarters, while the original 1984 Karate Kid movie wasn't exactly up there with ET and Top Gun in the pantheon of 80s big-screen hits, but nevertheless has accrued a nostalgic glow. Neither remake is particularly cast-driven, but working in The Karate Kid's favour is the traditional strong performance of family films during the long summer holiday.
With £4.88m including previews, Sony claimed the honours for The Karate Kid, convincingly winning the first bout against The A-Team's £3.57m including previews. However, it's important to note that The Karate Kid benefited from two extra days of previews compared to its rival. Looking just at the weekend takings, Karate Kid was a modest £50,000 ahead on Friday, £30,000 ahead on Saturday, and the two films pulled in almost identical grosses on Sunday. Of course, thanks to those school holidays, it will be weekdays when The Karate Kid will score dividends over The A-Team; the latter will likely be much more a weekend phenomenon.
The survivor
On its second weekend, Inception fell a modest 29% against its opening. Now on its third frame, its drop is an even more gentle 23%. Its takings of £3.57m on its third weekend are well ahead of third-frame grosses for pictures such as Iron Man 2 (£1.60m), Sex And The City 2 (£1.49m) and The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (£1.44m), which were much more front-loaded in their revenue curves. Only two 2010 releases took more on their third weekend – Alice In Wonderland and Shrek Forever After – and both those titles benefited from pre-existing brand awareness and strong family appeal.
The success of Inception, combined this weekend with kickass trio Toy Story 3, The Karate Kid and The A-Team, gives the market unprecedented strength in depth, at least if you restrict your view to the top four titles. Never before have four films all exceeded £3m in a weekend at the UK box-office. Of course, if you strip out the hefty previews of £2.29m from The Karate Kid and the ones totaling £1.07m from The A-Team, this particular statistic falls down.
Meanwhile, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, with a cumulative gross of £27.78m, celebrates becoming the top title in its franchise, overtaking New Moon's lifetime tally of £27.50m. Eclipse is the sixth-biggest hit of the past 12 months, behind Avatar, Alice In Wonderland, Toy Story 3, Up and Shrek Forever After.
Vive la France
Once again, the top arthouse contender in the market is a French film, with Gainsbourg entering the charts at number 8. The biopic of singer Serge Gainsbourg took £135,000 from 59 screens, and follows similar top-10 placings this summer for French titles Leaving, The Concert and Heartbreaker. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Gainsbourg's debut is nowhere near the opening of Coco Before Chanel (£423,000), which proved the top arthouse title of last summer. Nor can it match the success of Edith Piaf biopic La Vie En Rose, which began its run with £206,000 in June 2007. Yet another French-language title, Coco & Igor, arrives in the UK on Friday.
The loser
Falling out of the top 10 after just one week, with a troubling drop of 69% is upscale genre flick Splice, a cerebral slice of sci-fi starring Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley. Genre pictures typically fall fast – Predators' drop this week is 63%, for example – whereas arthouse titles tend to decline at a more modest pace. The plummet for Splice suggests the worst of all possible worlds: falling between two stools, and failing to hold the attention of either of its twin audiences.
The future
Overall, the market has ended July in triumphant style, with the weekend a whopping 70% up on the equivalent frame from 2009, when Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince held on to the summit in its third innings, and the top new title was kiddie flick G-Force. With a blockage in the summer pipeline caused by distributor caution over the World Cup, a sudden glut of strong commercial fare has caused a spectacular box-office revival. That strength looks set to continue this weekend with Cats & Dogs 2: The Revenge Of Kitty Galore; Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz in Knight and Day; and the third entry in the popular Step Up franchise. Both Cats & Dogs, arriving Wednesday, and Step Up 3 (Friday), will compete for 3D screens with Toy Story 3. It will be an intense three-way programming battle, but right now it's hard to see Woody, Buzz and friends losing the scrap for the prime sites and most audience-friendly showtimes.
Top 10 films
1. Toy Story 3, £8,115,193 from 564 sites. Total: £39,791,223
2. The Karate Kid, £4,882,306 from 446 sites (New)
3. The A-Team, £3,569,505 from 451 sites (New)
4. Inception, £3,229,651 from 459 sites. Total: £20,800,468
5. Shrek Forever After, £899,851 from 490 sites. Total: £29,193,540
6. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse £779,142 from 409 sites. Total: £27,781,529
7. The Rebound, £178,972 from 247 sites. Total: £916,571
8. Gainsbourg, £135,031 from 59 sites (New)
9. Predators, £112,088 from 164 sites. Total: £5,639,739
10. Once Upon A Time In Mumbai, £54,780 from 23 sites (New)
How the other openers did
South Of The Border, 14 screens, £12,381 + £8,210 previews
Beautiful Kate, six screens, £6,538
Frontier Blues, one screen, £4,544
Separado!, two screens, £3,461
Down Terrace, one screen, £1,919
