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With £7.91m including £2.45m in previews, The Lego Batman Movie tops the UK box-office chart going into the half-term school holiday. The result is very comparable with the opening salvo of The Lego Movie, exactly three years ago: £8.05m including previews of £2.16m. This time, the Warner Bros animation faced rather tougher competition in the marketplace, since Sing – which took £2.33m at the weekend – is still performing strongly. Three years ago, The Lego Movie came in against the rather less muscular Mr Peabody and Sherman, although Tinker Bell and the Pirate Fairy was also in the mix. The Lego Movie enjoyed extraordinary word-of-mouth, and went on to achieve a total of £33.5m in the UK. Warners would presumably be delighted if The Lego Batman Movie were to match that number. Despite landing in second place in the official comScore chart, Fifty Shades Darker grossed more than Lego Batman over the weekend period. In fact, the bonkbuster sequel’s total of £7.56m nearly matched Lego Batman’s previews-inclusive total.
Not terribly surprisingly, Fifty Shades Darker failed to match the opening weekend of 2015’s Fifty Shades of Grey, which was £13.55m. In the first place, not so many people read the second book in EL James’s erotic trilogy. In the second, a chunk of cinemagoers may have felt they had amply ticked the Fifty Shades box with the first movie. Moreover, the opening session of Fifty Shades of Grey included Valentine’s Day, which conveniently fell on a Saturday in 2015. Distributor Universal has reason to hope for a good result today (Tuesday), and in fact cinemas at the weekend were reporting strong advance bookings for Valentine’s Day to Universal. Fifty Shades Darker has achieved the second-biggest ever UK opening for an 18-certificate film, behind only Fifty Shades of Grey. After three days, Darker is running at 56% of the level of Grey’s box office. If that carries through to the end of the run, expect Fifty Shades Darker to romp home with just under £20m. At the weekend, the arrival of Lego Batman and Fifty Shades Darker at thousands of screens saw existing films in the market shedding sites, moving into smaller screen capacities and losing showtimes.
The likes of T2 Trainspotting (down 52%) and La La Land (down 48%) suffered their biggest falls to date. But La La Land bounced back on Monday, boosted by those five Bafta wins including best film. The week before, La La Land grossed £203,000 on the Monday. This week it took £225,000. In other words, instead of seeing box office fall by nearly half, as it did at the weekend, La La Land rose 11% on the previous Monday. With Dev Patel’s surprise supporting actor win figuring strongly in the Bafta conversation, the boost for Lion was even bigger. At the weekend, Lion fell 13% on the previous frame, but Monday was a different story. Lion grossed £170,000 yesterday, compared to £125,000 the previous Monday, a rise of 36%. The Monday boost for Lion was icing on the cake for a film that has held up particularly strongly ever since its release on 20 January. True, Lion has consistently grossed less than La La Land each weekend, but the gap has narrowed with each passing week.
On its opening weekend, Lion grossed £3.1m less than La La Land did over that three-day period (£4.37m v £1.27m). For the latest session, the gap was just £196,000 (£949,000 v £753,000). Lion has now reached £6.4m, which is five times its opening weekend number. There looks to be a long way to go for Lion, as long as it can hold its cinema screens in this competitive marketplace. Arriving on a platform release of £103,000 from 21 venues (including negligible previews of £2,700), Fences achieved a very healthy site average of £4,890. Although they do not appear in the official comScore chart, both Moonlight and Hidden Figures were likewise given platform releases on Friday. The respective distributors – Altitude and Fox – opted to give the films an official release date of this Friday (17 February), but they also had to ensure a release from last Friday into at least 10 cinemas in order to qualify them for this year’s Bafta awards. Hidden Figures played in 13 multiplex venues, grossing £72,000, for a muscular average of £5,531.
It also played one-offs in 19 independent sites, bringing the total for the weekend up to £83,000. Added to box office that the film has previously played during this awards season, the total for Hidden Figures is now £163,000, all of which will be added into its official opening number for the coming session. For Moonlight, it’s a similar story. Moonlight opened on a wider platform release – 28 cinemas – although these were comparatively limited showtimes, making it tricky to make a direct comparison with Fences or Hidden Figures. The outcome was a gross of £77,000. The running total for Moonlight – including previous previews – is £193,000. Moonlight didn’t convert any of its Bafta nominations into a win on Sunday, with even the film’s most hotly tipped nominee, Mahershala Ali, losing to Dev Patel in the supporting actor stakes. Altitude has reason to be hopeful that a different narrative will unfold at the Oscars later this month. Fences, Hidden Figures and Moonlight all enjoy significant expansions from this Friday.
Given that Mike Mills’s 20th Century Women missed out altogether at the Bafta nominations, and scored a single Oscar nod for original screenplay, the film’s release at the weekend into the crowded sea of awards contenders looked a tad optimistic. Fans of the film were braced for a box office wipeout. However, despite the extraordinary choices available to fans of quality cinema currently, and a surprise panning from the Guardian’s own Peter Bradshaw, the coming-of-age film opened with a very decent £60,000 from 14 sites, including £11,000 in previews. 20th Century Women expands to 45 cinemas from this Friday. Rolling into 89 cinemas, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk has begun with a dismal £14,700, yielding a site average of £165. The result is a long way from the expectations that were heaped on to this film when Life of Pi director Ang Lee was named as director, which is adapted from Ben Fountain’s highly acclaimed novel. Lee’s decision to film at the high frame rate of 120 per second (instead of the standard 24), and in 3D at 4K HD resolution, only added to the advance buzz.
The film has so far been a box office disaster everywhere it’s been released, apart from in China and Taiwan. Thanks to the arrival of Fifty Shades Darker and The Lego Batman Movie, takings overall are a very healthy 59% up on the previous frame, and are the fifth best for the past year. However, numbers are still down – by 12% – on the equivalent weekend a year ago, when Deadpool surprised the market with a sensational £13.7m opening (including previews). The coming weekend greets the arrival of Keanu Reeves hitman actioner John Wick: Chapter 2, which also plays Valentine’s Day previews today. The movie just opened in the US at the weekend, grossing $30m. Keanu faces off against The Great Wall, a fantasy action adventure starring Matt Damon. The film has been huge in China, but hasn’t set the box office charts on fire anywhere else. Reviews are embargoed until the last possible moment in the UK – despite the film having already released in 34 territories tracked by Box Office Mojo – which is hardly a vote of confidence from the distributor.
Also in the mix is The Founder, starring Michael Keaton as McDonald’s visionary Ray Kroc. As mentioned above, Hidden Figures and Moonlight receive their official releases, while Fences expands from its current narrow platform. 1. The Lego Batman Movie, £7,906,468 from 600 sites (new) 2. Fifty Shades Darker, £7,557,485 from 604 sites (new) 3. Sing, £2,325,281 from 601 sites. Total: £18,217,102 (3 weeks) 4. T2 Trainspotting, £1,420,910 from 516 sites. Total: £13,515,865 (3 weeks) 5. La La Land, £949,283 from 534 sites. Total: £26,497,599 (5 weeks) 6. Lion, £753,368 from 365 sites. Total: £6,427,316 (4 weeks) 7. Split, £682,691 from 368 sites. Total: £9,584,867 (4 weeks) 8. Hacksaw Ridge, £425,832 from 351 sites. Total: £4,290,940 (3 weeks) 9. Rings, £271,180 from 344 sites. Total: £1,462,257 (2 weeks) 10. The Space Between Us, £258,401 from 270 sites (new) Jolly LLB 2, £138,076 from 66 sites Fences, £102,688 from 21 sites