The winner: Kingsman: The Golden Circle
Declining a relatively slim 32% in its second frame, Kingsman: The Golden Circle added another £4.19m at the weekend in the UK for a 12-day tally of £15.6m. That compares with £8.25m for predecessor Kingsman: The Secret Service after two weekends of play. The original Kingsman film went on to achieve a lifetime total of £16.6m in the UK, so The Golden Circle is only £1m behind it. Director Matthew Vaughn’s Kick-Ass maxed out at £11.8m, Stardust at £15.0m, and X-Men: First Class at £15.1m, so The Golden Circle is a dead cert to become his biggest ever UK hit. (The Golden Circle is also ahead of films that Vaughn produced but didn’t direct such as Snatched and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.)
For comparisons with other spy franchises, all five of the Mission: Impossible films ended up in the £15m-£21m range at the UK box office. Rather different in tone, Jason Bourne, the last film in the Bourne franchise, reached £23.4m, so Kingsman still has a fair way to go to catch that.
The runner-up: It
Dropping 39% in its fourth frame, Stephen King adaptation It has now reached a mighty £29.4m, and will pass £30m this week. So far, six 2017 releases have passed the £30m barrier – Beauty and the Beast, Dunkirk, Despicable Me 3, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2, Spider-Man: Homecoming and La La Land – so It will be the seventh. In 2016, 11 titles reached the £30m threshold.
It has already achieved the distinction of becoming the biggest ever horror hit at the UK box office. Globally, it’s reached $556m, scoring well in supernatural-friendly markets such as Mexico and Brazil. Japan has yet to open.
The mid-table new arrivals: Goodbye Christopher Robin, Flatliners and Home Again
New releases Goodbye Christopher Robin, Flatliners and Home Again arrived in fourth, fifth and sixth place in the UK chart, all delivering mediocre numbers. The AA Milne story was the best of the bunch, with £781,000, but a wide release in 573 cinemas dilutes the site average to a rather weedy £1,363. Obvious comparison points are Finding Neverland (about Peter Pan author JM Barrie) and Miss Potter (Beatrix Potter). Finding Neverland began 13 years ago with a similar £776,000, but that was from just 324 cinemas, and at ticket prices substantially lower than today. Miss Potter kicked off in January 2006 with £1.40m including £289,000 in previews.
The Flatliners reboot and Reese Witherspoon comedy Home Again opened neck and neck with £487,000 and £484,000. Flatliners has a worryingly low IMDb user rating of 5.0/10, as well as a Metacritic score of 28/100. Expect a quick slide from cinemas for that one.
The Irish hit: Maze
Maze, telling the true story of the 1983 IRA breakout from the titular prison, is proving a smash hit in Ireland and Northern Ireland. Having began with £124,000 from 65 sites, the escape thriller saw box office rise to £134,000 in the second session, albeit boosted by an expansion to 81 venues. After 10 days, the total is £348,000.
The nostalgic celebration: Spice World: The Movie
Landing in the comScore weekend Top 20, rather surprisingly, is Spice World: The Movie, with £79,000 from 72 cinemas. Virtually all the screenings occurred on Friday evening, and proceeded after Spice Girl News contacted the OurScreen customer-led ticketing platform, suggesting Spice World return to cinemas for the 1997 film’s 20th anniversary. Via the OurScreen platform, customers can programme available titles at participating cinemas, and the screenings proceed only if a sales threshold is reached. Adding in returns from a few cinemas that programmed the film separately from OurScreen, box office should nudge £90,000.
The market
Due to the paucity of commercially potent new releases, box office overall slides 30% from the previous session, and it’s also down 25% on the equivalent weekend from 2017, when Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children and Deepwater Horizon were the top new releases. Cinema bookers now have mighty big hopes pinned on Blade Runner 2049, arriving in cinemas on Thursday, buoyed by major social media buzz and critical acclaim.
Top 10 UK films 29 September to 1 October
1. Kingsman: The Golden Circle, £4,187,105 from 620 sites. Total: £15,623,613 (two weeks)
2. It, £1,742,629 from 540 sites. Total: £29,444,212 (four weeks)
3. Victoria and Abdul, £943,300 from 594 sites. Total: £7,022,063 (three weeks)
4. Goodbye Christopher Robin, £781,110 from 573 sites (new)
5. Flatliners, £486,721 from 366 sites (new)
6. Home Again, £484,124 from 434 sites (new)
7. The Emoji Movie, £383,166 from 495 sites. Total: £14,454,556 (nine weeks)
8. The Jungle Bunch, £299,669 from 521 sites. Total: £1,076,244 (three weeks)
9. Despicable Me 3, £233,507 from 383 sites. Total: £46,967,001 (14 weeks)
10. Mother!, £196,358 from 322 sites. Total: £2,106,554 (three weeks)
Other openers
Judwaa 2, £178,813 from 58 sites
Exhibition on Screen: Canaletto, £57,019 from 17 sites
Daphne, £35,914 from 23 sites
Spyder, £26,095 from 41 sites
Njandukalude Nattil Oridavela, £25,250 from 62 sites
Tawai: A Voice from the Forest, £19,123 from 13 sites
Never Say Die, £15,420 from 13 sites
Karuppan, £5,937 from nine sites
Zoology, £5,390 from three sites
Pecking Order, £4,936 from 21 sites
Brimstone, £4,019 from 20 sites
Manolo: The Boy Who Made Shoes for Lizards, £2,238 from two sites
The Exception, £2,099 from one site
Killing Ground, £901 from one site
Kurtlar Vadisi: Vatan, £780 from four sites
Le Correspondant, £72 from one site
The Marker, £28 from one site
• Thanks to comScore. All figures relate to takings in UK and Ireland cinemas.
