The 2016 winner: Rogue One
Prior to release, many assumed that Rogue One: A Star Wars Story would turn out to be the year’s top-grossing film at the UK box office, and now this has indeed occurred. With £52.1m after 18 days of play, Rogue One is more than £1m ahead of its nearest competitor among 2016 releases: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
A year ago, The Force Awakens had reached £97.4m at the same stage of its run, on its way to a final total of £123.2m. If Rogue One performs with a similar pattern, it would reach a tally of £65-66m. That would require a remarkably long tail, but given that it’s not really being challenged in the blockbuster space currently, it’s highly achievable.
The 2016 runner-up: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Fantastic Beasts did enjoy the warm glow of being the top grossing film of the year – but for less than a week. By the end of the Christmas weekend, the wizarding adventure had reached a total of £47.5m, still in second place for 2016 and just behind Bridget Jones’s Baby (£48.1m). Fantastic Beasts overtook Bridget on 26 or 27 December, briefly earning first place for 2016, but by 1 January Rogue One had already elbowed it aside.
With £51m so far, Fantastic Beasts has now overtaken the UK box office of four of the eight Harry Potter films – although adjusted for ticket-price inflation, it has yet to catch any of them.
The comedy hit: Why Him?
With an opening gross of £2.18m, Why Him? has landed in second place in the UK box office chart and is the top new release for the period. However, it’s worth noting that the Bryan Cranston/James Franco comedy opened on Boxing Day, and so had seven days of ticket sales rolled into that figure. For the weekend period, takings were a less impressive £821,000 – enough for fifth place.
The obvious comparison title is Daddy’s Home, which opened on Boxing Day 2015 as the big Hollywood comedy for last year’s post-Christmas period. That teamed Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg, and opened with £1.63m (earned from just two days: 26 and 27 December), on its way to a total of £17.4m.
Daddy’s Home benefited from a 12A certificate, positioning it as a comedy for the whole family. In contrast, Why Him? is a 15. During the holiday period, there is a big upside for titles that can appeal to family members across multiple generations. Why Him? benefits from a generation-gap plot dynamic, but its appeal is more niche than Daddy’s Home.
Also benefiting from a Boxing Day release are Monster Trucks (£1.73m debut) and Collateral Beauty (£1.18m). Strip out all those extra days of play, and the weekend tallies for these films fall to £748,000 and £492,000 respectively.
The preview titles
Three major new releases opened on New Year’s Day, but are absent from the official comScore chart: Assassin’s Creed, A Monster Calls and Martin Scorsese’s Silence. In all cases, these films are being treated as new releases for the coming weekend, and they will report eight-day opening grosses (1-8 January) in a week’s time. On Sunday and Bank Holiday Monday, the three titles in fact earned more than £3m between them.
The slow burn: Moana
It’s been a long slog for Moana, but the Disney Animation title is now in a far better place than its debut weekend takings indicated. The film began on the first weekend of December with an uninspiring £2.21m including previews of £33,000. As we remarked at the time, this beginning was even worse than Disney Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur the year before, which started with £2.93m. Moana ended the New Year weekend with a cumulative total of £13.70m, and holiday Monday takings push the total up to £14.31m. The Good Dinosaur ended its run with £15.15m, making it Pixar’s lowest-grossing film ever at the UK box office. Moana won’t be one of Disney Animation’s great commercial achievements in the UK, but it should play to audience stragglers throughout January before being clobbered by Illumination’s Sing at the end of the month.
The Bollywood hit: Dangal
With £1.88m after ten days of release, Dangal is the biggest Bollywood hit of 2016 at UK cinemas. The previous biggest for the year were Sultan (£1.79m), starring Salman Khan, and Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (£1.47m), starring Anushka Sharma, Ranbir Kapoor and Aishwarya Rai. Dangal is a biopic of Mahavir Singh Phogat (played by Aamir Khan), who taught wrestling to his two daughters, both of whom won medals at the 2010 Commonwealth Games.
The documentary: The Eagle Huntress
Another title that’s picked up after a modest start is The Eagle Huntress. The documentary began in mid-December with an OK £23,600 from 27 cinemas, or £31,500 including previews. The film subsequently expanded – it was on at 52 venues for the New Year frame – and it has now reached a healthy £168,000, including holiday Monday. The film has already grossed more than seven times its opening, with what looks to be plenty of life in it yet.
The future
Since the previous frame was blighted by Christmas Day, when cinemas are closed, it’s no great surprise to see takings 39% up overall on that reporting period. The better comparison is with the equivalent weekend from last year – which welcomed Joy and The Danish Girl – and takings are down 14% on that session. Not much is opening this Friday, and that’s because the week’s principal new releases – Assassin’s Creed, A Monster Calls and Silence – are all already in cinemas. Assassin’s Creed – which reunites Macbeth director Justin Kurzel with stars Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard – has not been well reviewed (a 36/100 score at MetaCritic), but cinemagoers have so far been more generous (6.6/10 at IMDb). Silence is currently being better appreciated by critics (82/100) than by early audiences (7.7/10). Silence’s distributor will be hoping that awards buzz will sustain the film through to the Oscars ceremony on 26 February, but it faces competition from other titles competing for awards including La La Land, Manchester By the Sea (both 13 January), Lion and Jackie (both January 20).
Top 10 films 30 December-1 January
1. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, £5,959,299 from 673 sites. Total: £52,070,413 (three weeks)
2. Why Him?, £2,183,715 from 448 sites (new)
3. Passengers, £1,898,267 from 575 sites. Total: £7,470,970 (two weeks)
4. Monster Trucks, £1,726,229 from 471 sites (new)
5. Moana, £1,620,268 from 623 sites. Total: £13,701,447 (five weeks)
6. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, £1,514,227 from 504 sites. Total: £50,992,106 (seven weeks)
7. Collateral Beauty, £1,177,943 from 408 sites (new)
8. Ballerina, £594,356 from 524 sites. Total: £2,541,553 (two weeks)
9. Dangal, £391,594 from 149 sites. Total: £1,875,779 (two weeks)
10. Sully: Miracle on the Hudson, £247,621 from 265 sites. Total: £7,008,241 (five weeks)
Other openers
Berliner Philharmoniker – New Year’s Gala, £51,162 from 44 sites
Motor Mitraan Di, £9,317 from 9 sites
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Thanks to comScore. All figures relate to takings in UK and Ireland cinemas.
