Spectre casts a shadow
With Spectre invading cinemas yesterday, UK distributors proved predictably cautious at the weekend, not wishing to risk much in the way of new releases. Consequently, Hotel Transylvania 2 had no trouble holding on to the top spot, and has grossed £9.40m so far. With kids on holiday this week for October half-term, takings should be steady every day, and the animated sequel looks headed for mid-teens millions; the original Hotel Transylvania reached £8.30m over the course of its lifetime. In second place, The Martian has now cracked £20m. Ridley Scott’s film should be one of the big losers to Spectre, since it is competing for a similar audience. With what has evidently been good word-of-mouth, a long tail might extend its life once Spectre fever dies down.
With an exceptionally strong hold – down just 13% from the previous weekend – Suffragette continues to perform well, and has reached £5.81m after 14 days. The film that stars Carey Mulligan was the No 1 title on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday last week, and is doing exceptional weekday business, when older and female audiences are strong. Far From the Madding Crowd, also starring Mulligan, managed £6.21m over the course of its entire run.
Suffragette’s robust matinee business may be squeezed this week by the pincer movement of Spectre and the family films playing to a half-term audience (Hotel Transylvania 2, Pan), but should rebound when the kids are back at school next week. Spectre is playing this week in 647 cinemas – the widest ever release for a film in the UK and Ireland. Of course, the screen count will be far, far higher than that, with multiplexes offering audiences an enormous choice of start times (43 shows per day at a Vue in Birmingham, for example) by programming the film in multiple screens.
The new arrivals
Going strictly by weekend takings, Paranormal Activity: Ghost Dimension 3D landed in fifth place. However, thanks to previews on Wednesday and Thursday, it nudges up to third in the chart. The film took a decent £1.12m, or £1.47m including previews. The last Paranormal Activity film, The Marked Ones, kicked off in January 2014 with £1.58m including previews of £571,000. This new one actually did better over the three-day weekend period. The Last Witch Hunter, starring Vin Diesel, managed sixth place on the weekend, with £974,000. Previews on Wednesday and Thursday take the tally to £1.24m, pushing it ahead of Pan for fifth place.
The encores: Benedict Cumberbatch and Ed Sheeran
With the live feed of Benedict Cumberbatch in Hamlet selling out in most cinemas on 15 October, fans are now opting for the next best thing: encore screenings. The Barbican production, distributed by NT Live, notched up another £184,000 at the weekend, taking the tally so far to £2.45m. The previous best for a Shakespeare play in cinemas was David Tennant in Richard II, with £1.47m. Hamlet is now just ahead of the National Theatre’s Frankenstein, in second place in the all-time event cinema UK rankings, behind only War Horse (£2.93m). That’s not counting Secret Cinema events, which are fundamentally different in nature.
Jumpers for Goalposts, Ed Sheeran’s concert film taken from his three Wembley dates this summer, also delivered some handy encore numbers at the weekend, totalling £99,000. Including the live feed of the Leicester Square premiere last Thursday, with Sheeran in attendance, the total now stands at £347,000. Cumberbatch’s Hamlet is just £100,000 behind the total so far for the current Macbeth film, starring Michael Fassbender. Since the play is on at London’s Barbican, the incremental cost of filming it and beaming it to cinemas is negligible – although profit-sharing with key creative contributors, including the star driving the ticket sales, remains a question mark. Marketing costs also look significantly lower than the typical budget for launching a film.
The arthouse hit
Enjoying the strongest box-office hold in the chart, and increasing by 10% from its opening weekend, is The Lobster. Assisted by a modest increase from 75 to 84 cinemas, the cumulative total is now an impressive £652,000 – a commercial breakthrough for Greek-born director Yorgos Lanthimos, whose previous best was Dogtooth with £180,000 in total. It was always hard to predict how audiences would take to the film’s high-concept surreal premise – widowed, divorced and singleton adults being turned into an animal of their choice should they fail to pair up within 45 days at a country hotel facility – but the evidence so far suggests that The Lobster is satisfying cinema-goers as well as intriguing them. The IMDb user rating is a robust 7.7/10, close to the MetaCritic score of 80/100.
The movie glut
Although Monday’s arrival of Spectre saw a paucity of new titles with strong commercial potential arriving this past weekend, there was no shortage of titles with weak commercial potential. Rentrak recorded 23 new releases (see charts below), and in addition there are three new films listed by the Film Distributors Association as October 23 releases that did not show up in the Rentrak report. Numerous family films arrived for the half-term holiday, including Maya the Bee, Animal Kingdom: Let’s Go Ape and Paper Planes. Not only were these predictably beaten by big October movies Hotel Transylvania 2 and Pan, they were also humiliatingly eclipsed at the weekend by both Minions and Inside Out, now in their 18th and 14th week of release, respectively.
Documentary fans were offered a potentially bewildering choice between five new films: The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Listen to Me Marlon, They Will Have to Kill Us First: Malian Music in Exile, Brand: A Second Coming and Misery Loves Comedy (see “Other openers” chart below). None managed to land a strong commercial punch, and were all outgrossed by Ireland-only documentary The Queen of Ireland, celebrating the life of acerbic drag performer and unlikely national treasure Panti Bliss.
Admissions update
Admissions numbers are in for September, and they show the lowest tally for any month this year, with 9.24m tickets sold. However, September is traditionally a weak period for cinema-going, likewise recording the lowest monthly admissions totals in 2012, 2013 and 2014. Admissions for the month are 8.5% up on September 2014, buoyed by hits including Straight Outta Compton, Legend and Everest. Overall, admissions are 7.2% up on 2014 for the first nine months of the year. Cinema owners have good reason to assume this robust increase will be sustained, given that the fourth quarter of the year includes Spectre, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and the final Hunger Games movie.
The future
The relative lack of strong new releases saw box-office takings decline 36% from the previous weekend. However, they were were dead level with the equivalent frame from 2014, when Fury and The Book of Life were the top new titles. This coming Friday offers nothing with much strong commercial potential, but cinemas are nevertheless anticipating record takings. All the planets look aligned for Spectre to reach dizzying heights, and the film will report a seven-day opening in a week’s time.
Top 10 films October 23-25
1. Hotel Transylvania 2, £2,275,612 from 588 sites. Total: £9,401,493
2. The Martian, £1,732,329 from 561 sites. Total: £20,391,517
3. Paranormal Activity: Ghost Dimension, £1,472,427 from 405 sites (new)
4. Suffragette, £1,343,819 from 535 sites. Total: £5,806,295
5. The Last Witch Hunter, £1,241,292 from 365 sites (new)
6. Pan, £1,215,080 from 508 sites. Total: £4,592,531
7. Sicario, £549,458 from 414 sites. Total: £4,379,944
8. Crimson Peak, £500,299 from 432 sites. Total: £1,994,317
9. Legend, £286,176 from 255 sites. Total: £18,063,131
10. The Lobster, £241,922 from 84 sites. Total: £651,712
Other openers
Shaandaar, £165,717 (including £25,031 previews) from 59 sites
Maya the Bee, £75,014 (including £11,228 previews) from 243 sites
The Little Penguin: Pororo’s Racing Adventure, £50,084 from 40 sites
Naanum Rowdy Dhaan, £38,600 from 21 sites
Goodbye Mr Loser, £36,365 from eight sites
The Queen of Ireland, £28,348 from 22 sites (Ireland only)
My Little Pony: Equestria Girls: Friendship Games, £19,721 from 80 sites
Miississippi Grind, £19,314 from 19 sites
10 Enradhukulla, £18,953 from 11 sites
The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, £18,616 from 12 sites
Shareek, £16,726 from eight sites
Animal Kingdom: Let’s Go Ape, £13,313 from 83 sites
Listen to Me Marlon, £9,117 from nine sites
Paper Planes, £4,381 from 62 sites
They Will Have to Kill Us First, £3,361 from five sites
The Legend of Longwood, £3,013 from 24 sites (Ireland only)
Ranviir the Marshall, £2,839 from four sites
Make More Noise! Suffragettes in Silent Film, £2,265 from nine sites
The Big Knights, £1,242 from 8 sites
Brand: A Second Coming, £420 from one site
Misery Loves Comedy, £65 from one site
Thanks to Rentrak
