The winner: Kung Fu Panda 3
While the February half-term holiday this year saw Disney, Pixar and DreamWorks Animation all sit out the contest – ceding the field to Fox’s Chipmunks franchise – it’s a different story this Easter. Good Friday sees the arrival of Disney Animation’s Zootropolis, and it’s already begun popping up in previews, with more to follow. It’s been preceded by DreamWorks Animation’s Kung Fu Panda 3, which cruised to an easy win at the box office with £3.18m from 583 cinemas, plus £1.59m in previews, for a total of £4.77m. The weekend number is very similar to previous entries in the franchise, although more aggressive previews on the earlier films pushed those totals higher. Kung Fu Panda debuted in July 2008, with £3.11m plus £2.96m for a £6.07m total. Kung Fu Panda 2 began in June 2011, with £3.07m plus £3.12m in previews for a £6.19m total. Kung Fu Panda 3 has the whole Easter school holiday ahead of it – two solid weeks when families will be available for cinema visits, although it will face fierce competition from Zootropolis.
The runner-up: Allegiant
Landing a place below Kung Fu Panda 3, and with about half the box office, is Allegiant, the latest in The Divergent Series. This third entry in the franchise has begun with £1.58m, plus £262,000 in Thursday previews, for a four-day total of £1.84m. Stakeholders may have concerns that the franchise is now moving in the wrong direction, since the original Divergent kicked off in April 2014 with £1.77m, and Insurgent just under a year later with £2.55m plus previews of £385,000, for a £2.94m total. Ignoring previews, Allegiant has opened 38% below its predecessor. If previews are included in the calculations, it’s a very similar story: Allegiant is 37% behind Insurgent. The budget of Allegiant has not been confirmed, but the first film is believed to have cost $85m, and the second $110m. These films have a significant physical cost, and are a lot more expensive than rival franchise Maze Runner, for example. Both Maze Runner films outgrossed both in the Divergent series so far, going by worldwide box office. The wisdom of splitting the final novel in Veronica Roth’s YA trilogy into two films – Allegiant and next year’s Ascendant – may be called into question. If audience interest continues to flag, this hardly looks like the easy commercial win that resulted from the extending of the Harry Potter, Twilight and Hunger Games film franchises.
The real runner-up: London Has Fallen
Although Allegiant occupies second position in the official comScore chart, it does so only by virtue of the film’s Thursday previews. Going by Friday-to-Sunday takings only, the runner-up honours belong to London Has Fallen, which grossed £1.80m, taking its 11-day tally to £6.44m. The Gerard Butler actioner fell just 34% from the previous frame – the gentlest decline of any film in the top 10. That’s remarkable for several reasons. First, London Has Fallen is a sequel, so you would expect business to be front-loaded, with fans rushing out in the first week. Second, it’s a mainstream action picture, which is a genre that tends to skew to the kind of audiences (including young males) that are traditionally quick to see films, swiftly moving on to fresh releases. Third, reviews have been largely hostile, often an indication that word-of-mouth will be weak once the film begins to engage beyond the core fanbase. The film’s IMDb user rating remains a decent 6.4/10, and the MetaCritic score is 28/100 – evidently the audience and the paid professionals continue to disagree on the film’s merits. London Has Fallen has already overtaken the lifetime total here of predecessor Olympus Has Fallen (£6.22m). The film may be benefiting from a local boost in the UK, but the numbers suggest that further cities may soon be welcoming a dishevelled Butler trotting around familiar landmarks with US president Aaron Eckhart, while dispatching evil terrorists.
The scary movie face-off: The Witch v The Ones Below
Finding the perfect release date is never easy, but observers did wonder whether it was wise for distributor Icon to position its London-set chiller The Ones Below on the same weekend as Universal’s supernatural horror The Witch. The films are very different, but they both classify as “elevated genre”, having premiered respectively at the Toronto and Sundance film festivals. Wouldn’t the audiences overlap? In the end, the potential clash was solved by the very modest programming of The Ones Below – David Farr’s film was released into just 11 cinemas, all in London. Whether that was a strategic choice made by the distributor, or one forced on it by the indifference of cinema programmers, is hard to say. The Ones Below enjoys a 71% Fresh critical rating at Rotten Tomatoes, but a weak 38% approval rating among the site’s users. UK opening gross is a poor £7,000. The Witch debuts with £448,000 from 179 cinemas, including modest previews of £11,000. Site average is a decent £2,501. Given the low production cost, this looks like a canny acquisition for Universal, which has multiple foreign rights.
The indie challenger: Anomalisa
While Hail, Caesar! continues to be the top attraction for fans of independent cinema, Charlie Kaufman’s stop-frame animation Anomalisa is now positioned as a plucky alternative. Curzon Artificial Eye pushed the film out into 80 cinemas, delivering a debut of £223,000, including previews of £30,000. Assessing that result is a distinct challenge, since there are no real directly comparable titles you can point to. The Kaufman-directed Synecdoche, New York began in May 2009 with £123,000 from 30 venues, including previews of £10,000 – but that was live action, with a rich ensemble cast including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener and Michelle Williams. Reviews were significantly more ecstatic this time around, but a stop-frame animation about a male midlife crisis, with David Thewlis and Jennifer Jason Leigh in the voice cast, was never exactly a commercial slam-dunk.
The future
Thanks to the arrival of Kung Fu Panda 3, takings are a nice 26% up on the previous frame, and a very healthy 94% up on the equivalent weekend from 2015, when the top new releases were Run All Night and Suite Francaise. (This outcome is essentially a blip, caused by an earlier Easter, and hence the earlier release this year of a big animated film.) Among official releases, cinema bookers will have big hopes pinned on the JJ Abrams-produced 10 Cloverfield Lane, a “spiritual successor” to gene hit Cloverfield. Alternatives include fellow genre offering The Boy; religious-themed historical actioner Risen; and Ben Wheatley’s starry JG Ballard adaptation High-Rise. Zootropolis will be playing extensive previews on Saturday and Sunday.
Top 10 films March 11-13
1. Kung Fu Panda 3, £4,771,131 from 583 sites (new)
2. The Divergent Series: Allegiant, £1,838,019 from 526 sites (new)
3. London Has Fallen, £1,800,526 from 518 sites. Total: £6,444,871
4. Deadpool, £966,484 from 472 sites. Total: £35,773,741
5. Hail, Caesar!, £863,355 from 506 sites. Total: £3,244,566
6. Grimsby, £474,768 from 361 sites. Total: £4,451,956
7. The Witch, £447,626 from 179 sites (new)
8. How to Be Single, £333,681 from 374 sites. Total: £5,432,714
9. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip, £295,420 from 493 sites. Total: £15,711,070
10. Anomalisa, £223,387 from 80 sites (new)
Other openers
Fifty Shades of Black, £82,614 from 117 sites
Ardaas, £72,084 from 10 sites
Love Punjab, £33,661 from 5 sites
Kadhalum Kadandhu Pogum, £16,715 from 17 sites
Traders, £7,435 from 28 sites (Ireland only)
The Ones Below, £6,971 from 11 sites
Feast of Varanasi, £5,443 from 25 sites
The Here After, £3,316 from 10 sites
Puthiya Niyamam, £2,596 from 17 sites
In Rahon Se, £1,583 from 5 sites
Next to Her, £1,095 from 5 sites
Against the Sun, £36 from 1 site
Thanks to comScore. All figures relate to takings in UK and Ireland cinemas.
