The winner: Bridget Jones’s Baby
The US opening may have offered a disappointing $8.6m (£6.64m), but Bridget Jones’s Baby delivered a storming victory on home turf, with a UK debut of £8.11m. That’s the biggest opening ever for a film released in September, says distributor Universal.
Ignoring preview numbers, Bridget Jones’s Baby has the seventh biggest debut of the year, almost level with Finding Dory (£8.12m) and behind Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Captain America: Civil War, Suicide Squad, Deadpool and The Jungle Book. It opened bigger than summer franchise pictures including X-Men: Apocalypse (£7.35m, including £2.05m in previews) and Jason Bourne (£7.60m, including £2.29m in previews).
In 2016, the most aptly comparable title for Bridget is Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie, which began in early July with £4.04m including negligible previews. Bridget Jones’s Baby has delivered a little more than twice that opening number.
Almost 12 years have elapsed since the release of second film in the series, Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason, and it was hardly inevitable that audiences would return in equivalent numbers. Edge of Reason began with £10.44m, but that includes previews of £3.31m – so it was £7.13m for the actual weekend period. The original Bridget Jones’s Diary kicked off in April 2001 with £5.72m, including previews of £1.14m. Baby has brought the biggest weekend gross of the series.
Bridget Jones’s Baby should play to mixed-gender couples (more of a weekend audience) and female pairs and groups (strong on weekdays). Word of mouth will be crucial to sustain its performance.
The runner-up: Blair Witch
Bridget Jones’s Baby grossed more than eight times its nearest competitor, Blair Witch. Like Bridget, it is the third instalment in a franchise and a belated sequel to a second episode (Book of Shadows, released in 2000). This latest film took £959,000, and while it is some achievement to bring back audiences after the poorly received Book of Shadows, there seemed to be plenty of excitement about a successful creative revival of Blair Witch. Book of Shadows kicked off its UK run with £1.09m, including £108,000 in previews.
The event: The Beatles
The Top 10 chart, below, suggests that Ron Howard’s documentary The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years has achieved a scorching site average, given an opening weekend gross of £655,000 from 96 sites. Indeed, the film has done well – but not that well on a per cinema basis. The £655,000 figure includes the special transmission on Thursday of the film’s London premiere, which contributes £597,000 from 497 cinemas. Thereafter, it has been achieving spotty bookings – encore showings, in event cinema parlance.
Comparisons are hard to make, although the previous week the Nick Cave documentary One More Time With Feeling began with £343,000 from 59 sites, including £260,000 from a Thursday release in wider play.
The Irish hit: The Young Offenders
From a first-time feature director (Peter Foott) and starring two teenage actors also making their big-screen debuts (Alex Murphy, Chris Walley), Irish comedy The Young Offenders has delivered a robust debut in Ireland, with £172,000 from 65 sites. It premieres in the UK at the London film festival on 7 October.
The indie hit: Hunt for the Wilderpeople
Taika Waititi, co-director of the New Zealand comedy What We Do in the Shadows has followed up with Hunt for the Wilderpeople, which begins with an impressive £168,000 from 63 cinemas, including £15,00 in previews. That compares with a debut of £128,000 from 33 cinemas, including previews of £63,000, for Shadows.
Admissions update
Figures for August show 18.09m tickets were sold in the UK, up 26% up on the same month in 2015, and the biggest total for any month since August 2011. While admissions this year had been lagging behind 2015 levels, the strong showing in August means that they are now up 0.4% for the first eight months of the year. That’s a surprising outcome, given the strong product in 2015, which saw admissions surge from 2014 levels.
Star performers in August include Suicide Squad, Finding Dory and Jason Bourne. The challenge for 2016 in terms of continuing to match 2015 is the robust final quarter a year ago, which had Spectre and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Cinema bookers will be hoping that Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Rogue One can deliver equivalent numbers.
The future
Thanks to that scorching Bridget number, the 16-18 September market is up 64% on the previous frame and 43% ahead of the equivalent weekend from 2015, when Everest knocked Legend off the top spot. Now cinema bookers’ hopes are pinned on the starry remake of The Magnificent Seven, led by Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt.
Alternatives include British horror film The Girl With All the Gifts, with a cast including Gemma Arterton, Glenn Close and Paddy Considine. Ira Sachs (Love Is Strange) offers contemporary New York story Little Men, which has been exceptionally well reviewed. Daniel Radcliffe plays an FBI agent infiltrating neo-Nazi groups in Imperium. Irish horticulture true story Dare to Be Wild stars Emma Greenwell and Tom Hughes, who is currently playing Prince Albert in TV’s Victoria. Sunday sees concert documentary Michael Bublé – Tour Stop 148 play in more than 350 cinemas across the UK and Ireland.
Top 10 films, 16-18 September
1. Bridget Jones’s Baby, £8,111,077 from 641 sites (new)
2. Blair Witch, £959,401 from 462 sites (new)
3. The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years, £654,726 from 96 sites (new)
4. Sausage Party, £615,120 from 470 sites. Total: £6,560,005
5. Kubo and the Two Strings, £599,304 from 519 sites. Total: £1,707,990
6. Don’t Breathe, £574,782 from 437 sites. Total: £2,250,373
7. Bad Moms, £500,169 from 390 sites. Total: £6,870,879
8. Finding Dory, £483,538 from 512 sites. Total: £40,734,647
9. The Infiltrator, £370,439 from 264 sites (new)
10. Ben-Hur, £312,837 from 447 sites. Total: £1,792,732
Other openers
The Young Offenders, £171,549 from 65 sites (Ireland only)
Hunt for the Wilderpeople, £167,646 from 63 sites
The Clan, £42,976 from 14 sites
Pink, £35,848 from 18 sites
Actor in Law, £35,348 from 21 sites
Sługi Boże, £17,598 from 22 sites
El Sur, £9,198 from five sites
Dharam Yudh Morcha, £8,815 from six sites
Sour Grapes, £4,880 from four sites
Two Women, £3,871 from six sites
Pretham,£2,156 from 15 sites
S Storm, £1,369 from one site
El Değmemiş Aşk, £1,282 from one site
The Neighbour, £206 from seven sites
• Thanks to comScore. All figures relate to takings in UK and Ireland cinemas.
