Call it an Oscar bounce. Having scooped eight golden statuettes at the Academy Awards a week ago, Slumdog Millionaire returned to the top of the box-office chart in its eighth week of release. Shrugging off challenges from several high-profile new releases, a big expansion for Gran Torino, and previous top titles Bolt and Confessions of a Shopaholic, Danny Boyle's crowd-pleaser took £1.68m for a total to date of £25.87m. The weekend's takings were 7% up on the previous frame, and only 8% less than Slumdog's debut weekend back in early January.
Slumdog Millionaire is now the sixth biggest hit of the past 12 months, having overtaken both Hancock and WALL-E over the last seven days. It will soon pass Sex and the City (£26.43m) to enter the year's top five, but will fail to match the £40m-plus hauls achieved by 2008's top blockbuster biggies: Mamma Mia!, Quantum of Solace, The Dark Knight and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull. Still, for a low-budget, star-free drama that is partly in a foreign language, it's a remarkable achievement.
Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino, expanding from 62 to 388 cinemas, leaped up to second place, with takings of £1.35m – just ahead of highest new entrant The Unborn. Shrugging off mostly negative reviews (13% "fresh" at Rotten Tomatoes), David S Goyer's teen-appealing horror flick grossed £1.3m, just behind the debut of the recent My Bloody Valentine, which benefited from a strong showing in 3D venues. The Unborn did not profit from an existing brand or – typical for the genre – much in the way of star names, unless you count Twilight baddie Cam Gigandet or a miscast Gary Oldman as an exorcist rabbi academic.
Second highest new entry was Tom Tykwer's The International, starring Clive Owen as an Interpol agent closing in on a villainous European bank. With three-star reviews across the board and no specific target audience in its sights, The International evidently lacked strong, urgent, first-choice appeal, picking up a so-so £760,000 from 379 venues. Comparable Clive Owen vehicles are Alfonso Cuaron's dystopian thriller Children of Men (£1.28m) and Spike Lee's bank-heist picture Inside Man (£1.81m). However, The International's result is ahead of ultra-violent Owen actioner Shoot 'Em Up, which debuted in 2007 to £375,000.
So far in 2009, the robust market for chick flicks has made significant hits of Bride Wars, He's Just Not That Into You and Confessions of a Shopaholic, which all opened in the £1.7m–£1.9m range, not counting any preview takings. But the limp debut of New in Town (£439,000 from 302 screens for 10th place in the chart) suggests that saturation point has now been reached. Alternatively, audiences merely found the film's proposition – slick executive Renee Zellweger warming to blue-collar hunk Harry Connick Jr in wintry Minnesota – highly resistible. The result is a worry for Zellweger, who has struggled in romcoms outside the lucrative Bridget Jones franchise: the screwball-inflected Leatherheads and Down With Love also opened weakly with £475,000 and £599,000 respectively.
Buoyed by mostly ecstatic reviews and a Cannes Palme d'Or win, Lauren Cantet's The Class began with a highly encouraging £138,000 from 36 sites. This is bigger than the last French breakout hit I've Loved You So Long, that debuted with £117,000 from 29 screens on its way to a total of £1.2m. It's also bigger than the openings of 2008's Man On Wire, Priceless and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. In fact, it's the best opening of any French-language film since Tell No One and La Vie En Rose from summer 2007, unless you count animation Persepolis, which was released in mostly dubbed English-language prints.
The Class was not selected for investment from the UK Film Council's P&A Fund, which helps distributors break out specialist releases to wider audiences. The fund did, however, allocate £120,000 to assist in the marketing of Franklyn, British director George McMorrow's ambitious arthouse fantasy debut. Judging by an opening weekend of £53,000 from 54 screens, audiences have decoded reviews along the lines of "an encouragable talent to watch" as "probably not worth my hard-earned money".
Other Oscar-nominated movies enjoyed audience spikes at the weekend but without much correlation to their awards hauls. The Reader, which won best actress, went up a handy 13%, bringing its total past £5m; and Milk, which won best actor and original screenplay, was very steady, declining just a few per cent. But Doubt, which won nothing, increased by 59%, while Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which won for supporting actress, fell 44%.
How the other openers did
Gun Crazy, 2 screens, £3,092
Zill-E-Shah, 1 screen, £526
The Universe Of Keith Haring, 1 screen, £346
Peter Beard: Scrapbooks From Africa, 1 screen, £220
Obscene: A Portrait Of Barney Rosset, 1 screen, £187
