The head-to-head
When Warners and Universal both opted for the third weekend in May as the release date for their films Mad Max: Fury Road and Pitch Perfect 2, most industry analysts expected the rebooted road warrior to beat the glee club maidens. After all, George Miller’s slice of post-apocalyptic vehicular carnage comes with a reported $150m (£97m) production price tag, compared with around $30m for the a cappella comedy. The original Pitch Perfect film opened in the UK with £952,000, on its way to a lifetime total of £6.49m – thus achieving a large multiple of its opening number.
Pitch Perfect went on to deliver significant sales on DVD, building an audience that has evidently converted to theatrical with this sequel: Pitch Perfect 2 has debuted with a stunning £5.01m from 496 cinemas, yielding a site average above £10,000. The film looks well-positioned to play as both a weekend date-night attraction and also a midweek evening out for female friendship groups, and the 12A-certificate title will also benefit from the school half-term holiday, which begins on 22 May. Pitch Perfect 2 has achieved one of the biggest-ever opening-weekend numbers for a female director (Elizabeth Banks), following the success earlier this year for Sam Taylor-Johnson with Fifty Shades of Grey.
Previous franchises that followed a similar pattern – a big theatrical uptick with the second film, following a stellar DVD result with the first – include Austin Powers, Jason Bourne and Twilight.
The success of Pitch Perfect 2 means that Mad Max: Fury Road had to settle for second place. That indignity aside, the achieved number is actually entirely decent, especially when you consider the risk of mounting a sequel to a film franchise that saw its most recent entry come out in 1985. The danger was always that younger audiences didn’t know or care about the character, leaving nostalgic middle-aged males as the primary target. Fury Road has kicked off with £4.54m, including £639,000 in previews. That’s the biggest-ever debut for a film featuring Tom Hardy in the lead role: titles that opened bigger, such as Inception and The Dark Knight Rises, showcased the actor in a supporting part.
Mad Max’s distributor Warners released Godzilla a year ago in the same mid-May slot – another film based on a vintage property. Godzilla debuted with £6.39m, a little ahead of Mad Max: Fury Road. Thereafter, it fell away rather quickly, achieving a lifetime total of £17.24m.
The disappointment
Conceived and made under the title Girls’ Night Out, director Julian Jarrold’s VE Day-set royal caper was never an automatic slam-dunk with audiences. The cast showcases relative newcomers in the lead roles: Sarah Gadon and Bel Powley play princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. However, by the time the film was retitled A Royal Night Out and set for mid-May release, expectations of success had risen: the film seemed a strong possibility to perform as a word-of-mouth hit, given the warm reactions to the film from press and cinema bookers.
Those spiralling hopes now look to have been rather optimistic, with A Royal Night Out opening with a mediocre £302,000 from 333 cinemas, including previews of £27,000. With the film’s single-screen week-long platform at Odeon Leicester Square added in, the total gross rises to £315,000. Lionsgate has reasonable expectation of a decent midweek result, given the older audience skew, and warm approval ratings may help sustain it, but cinemas will presumably start cutting back showtimes and shoving it into smaller screens from this Friday.
The arthouse market
Unless you count multiplex-friendly crossover titles Far From the Madding Crowd and A Royal Night Out, there are no arthouse movies in the current box-office Top 15. Top performer is Olivier Assayas’ Clouds of Sils Maria, with £55,000 from 30 cinemas, including nearly £7,000 in previews. A screen average below £2,000 is not that great for a film benefiting from a fairly focused release, including London West End arthouse venues that usually deliver strong numbers.
After a fairly uninspiring start the previous weekend, the well-reviewed Girlhood has held up nicely, declining just 21% in box-office revenue. An expansion from 28 to 33 cinemas will have helped with the healthy sustain for the Céline Sciamma-directed film.
The Girlhood result contrasts with Christian Petzold’s Phoenix, which debuted with fairly similar numbers, and has now fallen sharply in week two. The Nina Hoss starrer drops 65% from the previous weekend and does not look set to repeat the sustained run of Petzold’s 2012 hit Barbara, which reached £198,000 in the UK. Phoenix is now at £77,000.
Despite winning massive acclaim in Cannes last year and garnering a number of prizes from international festivals, the critically lauded Ukrainian film The Tribe failed to woo significant audiences, debuting with £12,700 from 16 cinemas, including previews of around £4,000. Despite reviews encouraging audiences to sample a unique picture – a virtually all-deaf cast, all in sign language, with no subtitles – many have evidently ducked the challenge.
The future
Following the weak previous frame, which suffered from a lack of commercially strong new releases (Spooks: The Greater Good was the best thing going), box-office has rebounded nicely, up 53%. Takings are also 42% up on the equivalent session from 2014, which was led by Godzilla. Cinema owners will be hoping for decent holds from Pitch Perfect 2 and Mad Max: Fury Road, as well as a strong debut from Disney’s Tomorrowland: A World Beyond, directed by Brad Bird (The Incredibles) and starring George Clooney. The latest remake of Poltergeist should deliver reliable numbers. François Ozon’s The New Girlfriend should lead the arthouse pack.
Top 10 films, 15-17 May
1. Pitch Perfect 2, £5,005,394 from 496 sites (new)
2. Mad Max: Fury Road, £4,538,933 from 546 sites (new)
3. The Avengers: Age of Ultron, £1,661,968 from 521 sites. Total: £43,250,662
4. Spooks: The Greater Good, £533,843 from 421 sites. Total: £2,068,461
5. Far From the Madding Crowd, £400,566 from 476 sites. Total: £4,703,756
6. A Royal Night Out, £301,686 from 333 sites. Total: £315,238
7. Home, £252,245 from 483 sites. Total: £22,933,032
8. Unfriended, £250,428 from 361 sites. Total: £3,303,969
9. Fast & Furious 7, £224,972 from 315 sites. Total: £38,146,435
10. The Age of Adaline, £193,494 from 338 sites. Total: £1,084,834
Other openers
Bombay Velvet, £93,214 from 73 sites
Clouds of Sils Maria, £55,139 from 30 sites
The Tribe, £12,727 from 16 sites
Purampokku, £10,179 from 11 sites
Lambert and Stamp, £7,527 from 12 sites
Only Angels Have Wings, £3,042 from 3 sites
Niyazi Gul, The Galloping Vet, £2,531 from 4 sites
The Man Who Saved the World, £725 from 1 site
A Fuller Life, £333 from 2 sites
