The Winner: Transformers
Transformers: The Last Knight, the latest in a seemingly endless series of sequels and brand exploitations this summer, had no problem shoving Wonder Woman off the top spot after a three-week stay, nabbing first place with £4.64m, including £734,000 in previews. That’s almost as much as the weekend box office for the rest of the top 10 put together.
Drill down into the details and the picture begins to look less impressive. Previous Transformers instalment Age of Extinction kicked off with a towering £11.75m, although that number was boosted by six days of previews, contributing £8.04m. Before that, Dark of the Moon (2011) began with £6.5m (£10.73m including previews), Revenge of the Fallen (2009) with £8.35m (no previews) and the original Transformers (2007) with £4.9m (£7.26m including previews).
So far this year, ignoring previews, 13 films have opened bigger than The Last Knight, including Beauty and the Beast, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 and Wonder Woman. Currently, the IMDb user rating for the film is a mediocre 5.3/10. That should be a worry for Paramount, Hasbro and partners because franchise fans tend to rush to see a movie first, and user ratings tend to drift downwards. The MetaCritic score is a dismal 28/100.
The classy alternative: Hampstead
Audiences flocked to The Lady in the Van (2015), which was set in London NW1, so how about the NW3-set Hampstead, which offered older and upscale audiences a clear alternative to the Transformers film? Answer: £454,000 from a generous 485 cinemas, giving a £935 site average.
Anecdotally, the film achieved varied results across the UK. Cinemagoers flocked to see it at Everyman Hampstead, for example, but audiences in the north and the Midlands were less enthused by this late-blossoming love story involving Diane Keaton as a kooky charity shop volunteer and Brendan Gleeson as a homeless man occupying a shack on the edge of Hampstead Heath. The Lady in the Van began with £2.26m from 523 cinemas, on its way to an impressive final tally of £12.9m. Hampstead will be lucky to do a fifth of those numbers.
The Irish hit
With its cinema count rising modestly from 44 to 55, Irish crime tale Cardboard Gangsters – about a youthful gang trying to gain control of the drugs trade in a working-class Dublin suburb – saw its box office surge by 75%. The film, which is currently on release only in Ireland and Northern Ireland, took £73,000 in its second frame and reached £166,000 after 10 days. Distributor Wildcard had a huge success last year with doofus comedy The Young Offenders, cracking £1m in Ireland alone. Wildcard hopes Cardboard Gangsters will reach cinemas in mainland Britain in a few weeks’ time.
Admissions update
Admissions figures – the number of tickets sold – are in for May, and they show a drop of 10% compared with May 2016, when titles on release included Captain America: Civil War and X-Men Apocalypse. However, thanks to commercial powerhouses earlier this year, including Beauty and the Beast in March and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 in late April, admissions are up 9% for the first five months. June 2017 is proving lacklustre, with both Baywatch and The Mummy so far failing to crack £10m at the box office. June 2016 was also pretty poor, compounded by distributors holding back titles because of the Uefa European Championship in France.
The market
Thanks to the arrival of Transformers: The Last Knight, and helped by more patchy weather compared with the soaring temperatures a week earlier, box office has staged a decent recovery, up 67 %. However, takings are still a troubling 45% down on the equivalent frame from 2016, which welcomed The Secret Life of Pets to cinemas. The month really can’t end soon enough for cinema bookers, who have hopes pinned on Despicable Me 3 and Edgar Wright’s well-reviewed Baby Driver, both out this week
Top 10 films, 23-25 June
1. Transformers: The Last Knight, £4,635,570 from 577 sites (new)
2. Wonder Woman, £1,575,673 from 589 sites. Total: £18,836,596 (four weeks)
3. The Mummy, £761,554 from 509 sites. Total: £7,554,607 (three weeks)
4. Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge, £684,806 from 470 sites. Total: £18,463,353 (five weeks)
5. Baywatch, £455,159 from 390 sites. Total: £8,852,634 (four weeks)
6. Hampstead, £453,522 from 485 sites (new)
7. Tubelight, £299,811 from 153 sites (new)
8. Churchill, £259,466 from 393 sites. Total: £986,085 (two weeks)
9. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul, £253,508 from 504 sites. Total: £5,421,190 (five weeks)
10. My Cousin Rachel, £168,735 from 394 sites. Total: £ 2,011,101 (three weeks)
Other openers
The Book of Henry, £72,128 from 120 sites
The Graduate: £28,946 from 28 sites (reissue)
Anbanavan Asaradhavan Adangadhavan, £8,003 from 15 sites
Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger, £7,379 from 12 sites
Vanamagan, £5,974 from three sites
Twice Shy, £3,799 from six sites
Souvenir, £2,471 from six sites
Edith Walks, £856 from four sites
La folle histoire de Max et Léon, £240 from one site
Dangerous Game, £39 from two sites
•Thanks to comScore. All figures relate to takings in UK and Ireland cinemas.
