The winner: American Made
After The Mummy rather humiliatingly failed to land the UK top spot on its release in June, Tom Cruise now makes it second time lucky this summer with the chart-topping arrival of American Made. Having said that, the Doug Liman thriller’s opening weekend box office of £1.07m is the lowest for a number one title in 2017, and is in fact the lowest since mid-October 2013, when Hugh Jackman/Jake Gyllenhaal child-kidnap drama Prisoners remained at the top spot for a third week, and WikiLeaks-themed flop The Fifth Estate was the top new entry.
The also-rans: Logan Lucky and Detroit
While American Made achieved a site average close to £2,000, fellow debutants Logan Lucky and Detroit both managed per-cinema numbers in the £1,500 ballpark. Those numbers are nothing for distributors StudioCanal and eOne to celebrate, but neither are they embarrassments. Back when it acquired Logan Lucky, StudioCanal may have had higher hopes for a Steven Soderbergh-directed heist thriller starring Channing Tatum, Adam Driver and Daniel Craig, but now it must make do with a UK opening of £705,000 from 482 venues. Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit has begun with £559,000 from 378 sites, with previews taking that tally up to £658,000.
The flop: Rough Night
Landing outside the top 10 with £244,000 from 378 cinemas, Rough Night, which stars Scarlett Johansson, Jillian Bell, Kate McKinnon and Zoe Kravitz, is the latest underperforming Hollywood comedy of 2017. This poor result follows weak performances by Will Ferrell starrer The House, Amy Schumer-Goldie Hawn team-up Snatched and the big-screen reboot of Baywatch. Only Girls Trip, now at £7.8m including bank holiday Monday, could be termed a comedy hit this year – unless you count genre hybrid Get Out.
Dunkirk crosses the £50m barrier
The weekend period saw Dunkirk gross a number below £1m for the first time since its late-July release (£999,000, in fact), but distributor Warners will be celebrating the film passing the £50m box-office milestone. Including bank holiday Monday, the Christopher Nolan second world war film has now reached £52.0m, thus pushing into the top 25 box-office hits of all time at UK and Ireland cinemas. Beauty and the Beast (£72.4m) remains the top release of 2017.
The market
In the US, a perfect storm of weak new product, a huge sporting event (the Floyd Mayweather v Conor McGregor fight) and Hurricane Harvey delivered the worst weekend for the US box office in 16 years. In the UK, the numbers were bad, but nowhere near that bad. The overall market delivered the second worst weekend takings of the past year.
With the top title (American Made, £1.07m) grossing just over three times the box office of the film in 10th place (The Dark Tower, £319,000), the weekend also delivered one of the least polarised markets we’ve seen in a long while. (As recently as late July, we witnessed a market where the top title grossed 130 times the takings of the film in 10th place.)
What’s more, the box office looks unlikely to heat up in the coming frame, since new releases are dominated by indie titles including Patti Cake$, God’s Own Country, The Limehouse Golem and Una.
Top 10 films 25-27 August
1. American Made, £1,067,075 from 543 sites (new)
2. Dunkirk, £998,531 from 599 sites. Total: £51,679,746 (6 weeks)
3. The Hitman’s Bodyguard, £883,681 from 500 sites. Total: £4,153,837 (2 weeks)
4. Logan Lucky, £705,087 from 482 sites (new)
5. The Emoji Movie, £682,694 from 589 sites. Total: £10,534,953 (4 weeks)
6. Annabelle: Creation, £666,181 from 470 sites. Total: £6,391,376 (3 weeks)
7. Detroit, £658,028 from 378 sites (new)
8. Despicable Me 3, £395,299 from 548 sites. Total: £44,352,710 (9 weeks)
9. Girls Trip, £325,127 from 298 sites. Total: £7,705,711 (5 weeks)
10. The Dark Tower, £318,768 from 513 sites. Total: £1,945,671 (2 weeks)
Other openers
Rough Night, £244,462 from 378 sites
Mayweather vs McGregor, £171,256 from 52 sites (live event)
Vivegam, £106,977 from 60 sites
Thomas & Friends: Journey Beyond Sodor, £92,389 from 285 sites
A Gentleman: Sundar Susheel Risky, £54,121 from 52 sites
Hotel Salvation, £17,678 from 18 sites
A Taxi Driver, £7,362 from 3 sites
In Bed with Victoria, £4,008 from 5 sites
Return to Ithaca, £359 from 1 site
Bushwick, £33 from 1 site
Thanks to comScore. All figures relate to takings in UK and Ireland cinemas.
