The fake winner: Paper Towns

For the second week in a row, Inside Out has been denied the top spot by an official chart champ boosting its “weekend” tally with hefty previews. A week ago it was Pixels that elbowed aside the Pixar hit, thanks to four extra days of takings. Now it’s the turn of Paper Towns, boosting the £744,000 it earned over the Friday-to-Sunday period with an additional £1.33m grossed on Monday to Thursday last week. Without that extra box office, Paper Towns would have landed in sixth place, behind Inside Out, Sinister 2, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, The Man from UNCLE and Pixels. But with official takings of £2.07m, Paper Towns nabs the top spot. The chart win may not be deserved, but distributor Fox nevertheless has just cause to celebrate the film’s box office so far. In the US, after five weeks on release, Paper Towns has earned $31m, and has now run out of puff. An equivalent UK result, by rule of thumb, is £3.1m. Fox UK has already achieved over £2m after just seven days of play, and should sail past that £3.1m target.

The real winner: Inside Out

Once again, the Pixar animation must console itself with a moral victory. Disney will be pretty pleased to see the film earn more at the weekend than any other film on release, and this in Inside Out’s fifth week of play. The last time a film occupied the chart summit so deep into its run was back in December 2012 with Skyfall. Inside Out added £3.25m over the past seven days, bringing its total to £30.65m. That sees it overtake A Bug’s Life in the all-time Pixar chart (although ticket prices were significantly lower in 1999). It’s also breathing down the neck of Monsters University, on £30.76m. The effect of the weather at the weekend can be clearly viewed with Inside Out’s daily tallies. Takings rose from Friday to Saturday, as you’d expect on a family film, and then rose again on a rainy Sunday (whereas traditionally you’d expect to see a dip). Outside holiday periods, family films usually drop significantly on weekdays. In the summer, it’s a different story, and Inside Out has been remarkably consistent all last week, with Wednesday better than any of the weekend days, and Tuesday and Thursday both ahead of Friday and Saturday. There’s also a strong adult skew on this title, so it’s by no means just about the family audience.

The top new entrant: Sinister 2

If Paper Towns’ extensive previews are excluded from its tally, top new release at the weekend was Sinister 2, the latest hit from prolific producer Jason Blum. The original Sinister debuted in October 2012 with £1.44m. This one has begun with a softer £1.07m. It’s fair to say that the Sinister brand isn’t as potent as fellow Blumhouse franchises Paranormal Activity and Insidious. Across the weekend, takings dipped from Friday to Saturday and again on Sunday – par for the course with a horror sequel, but not even the rain on Sunday (a boost to box office for most films in the market) could arrest the decline.

The battling comedies: Vacation and The Bad Education Movie

While the performance of a film like Sinister 2 was moderately guessable, the same could not be said of The Bad Education Movie. It was reasonable to assume that it would perform significantly below the bar set by The Inbetweeners Movie, but even a third – or a quarter, fifth or sixth – of that number would be a fine result, given that the 2011 sitcom spinoff began with £8.64m plus previews of £4.57m. In fact, Bad Education has kicked off with just 9% of the initial tally for The Inbetweeners Movie, and that’s ignoring the earlier film’s rich previews. The Jack Whitehall comedy opened with a so-so £595,000. There’s still time before schools, sixth-form colleges and universities return for the autumn, so Bad Education is well placed to grab some more end-of-summer cash from the target audience, before a rich afterlife on DVD and VOD. Still, even Keith Lemon: The Film opened with £1.20m in the exact same late-August spot three years ago, more than double The Bad Education Movie’s debut. Thanks to previews totaling £29,400, Vacation sneaks one place higher than The Bad Education Movie in the chart, with official takings of £609,000. It’s a middling result for a middling reboot of a comedy franchise that may be fondly remembered in some quarters, but has never been commercially potent in the UK.

Admissions update

Admissions totals are in for July, and the number of tickets sold shows a big rise on July 2014. Thanks to July hits, including Inside Out and Ant-Man plus sustained runs by June releases Jurassic World and Minions, cinemas saw 20% more bums on seats than the same month a year ago. For the first seven months of the year overall, admissions are running an impressive 11% ahead of 2014. However, box office for August so far has been down on 2014, so the increase in admissions for the year will not be so high when new figures are announced in a month’s time.

Summer 2015 report

Next Bank Holiday Monday signals the end of the summer movie season. This column takes a break next week, so we are getting in early with a summer overview, and the Top 10 is below. What emerges is a story of remarkable disparity within the chart, with top title Jurassic World (£63.8m) grossing more than five times the 10th-placed San Andreas (£11.5m). This contrasts with summer 2014, when the biggest hits were The Inbetweeners 2 (£33.3m) and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (£32.7m), which were less than double 10th-placed Godzilla (£17.2m). None of the summer 2015 movies landed in the £20-30m range, which is normally the sweet spot for summer blockbusters. Last year, Guardians of the Galaxy (£28.5m), X-Men: Days of Future Past (£27.1m), How to Train Your Dragon 2 (£25.0m) and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (£24.0m) all delivered numbers in this range.

The future

Even by the standards of late August, box office was pretty flat at the weekend, 16% down on the equivalent weekend in 2014, when new entrant Lucy topped the chart, with The Inbetweeners 2 sturdy in second place. Cinema bookers are now pinning their hopes on Straight Outta Compton, arriving Friday, fresh from its US box office triumph. NWA were not quite the phenomenon in the UK that they were in the US, but hopes remain high for a strong commercial result.

Alternatives this Bank Holiday weekend include We Are Your Friends, featuring Zac Efron as an EDM DJ; stoner action sci-fi comedy American Ultra, with Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart; and videogame reboot Hitman: Agent 47, with Rupert Friend. Arthouse audiences are likely to head for 45 Years, from Weekend director Andrew Haigh.

Top 10 summer 2015 box-office

1. Jurassic World, £63.84m
2. Avengers: Age of Ultron, £48.33m
3. Minions, £44.20m
4. Fast & Furious 7, £38.53m
5. Inside Out, £30.65m
6. Pitch Perfect 2, £17.39m
7. Mad Max: Fury Road, £17.36m
8. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, £16.95m
9. Ant-Man, £15.78m
10. San Andreas, £11.45m
(Films released since the start of April 2015)

Top 10 films 21-23 August

1. Paper Towns, £2.07m from 472 sites (new)
2. Inside Out, £1,379,702 from 597 sites. Total: £30,651,236
3. Sinister 2, £1,069,261 from 396 sites (new)
4. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, £1,042,827 from 475 sites. Total: £16,945,898
5. The Man from U.N.C.L.E., £917,934 from 518 sites. Total: £3,545,230
6. Pixels, £820,456 from 515 sites. Total: £4,730,907
7. Vacation, £608,748 from 432 sites (new)
8. The Bad Education Movie, £594,861 from 414 sites (new)
9. Trainwreck, £492,567 from 456 sites. Total: £2,171,353
10. Minions, £390,409 from 497 sites. Total: £44,204,464

Other openers
Gemma Bovery, £105,241 from 78 sites
The Wolfpack, £65,701 from 56 sites
Strange Magic, £56,127 from 289 sites
All Is Well, £50,976 from 28 sites
Good People, £25,454 from 18 sites
The President, £6,412 from four sites
ELS One Cologne: Counter Strike, £5,852 from 57 sites (live event)
Escobar: Paradise Lost, £3,379 from 10 sites
Looking for Love, £3,062 from 10 sites

The Treatment, £3,001 from six sites
The Dance of Reality, £2,901 from one site
The Forgotten Kingdom, £2,137 from one site
Pressure, £1,327 from seven sites

• Thanks to Rentrak