The Croods was the big Easter winner, easing just 6% (when previews are removed) to £3.3m and a very healthy ten day total of £10.6m. This is ahead of the animation benchmark set by Brave 3D last year.
G.I. Joe: Retaliation 3D was the best performing newcomer, easily outstripping the first GI Joe film with £2.8m (including £890k from previews).
Film director Martin Scorsese has made an impassioned plea for young people to embrace the rich cinema heritage of America before it disappears.
The 70-year-old Oscar-winning director of films such as Raging Bull, Goodfellas and Taxi Driver was delivering the annual Jefferson humanities lecture at the John F. Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts in Washington.
In a speech called Persistence of Vision: Reading the Language of Cinema, Scorsese said: “We’re face-to-face with images all the time in a way that we never have been before. Young people need to understand that not all images are out there to be consumed like, you know, fast food and then forgotten. We need to educate them to understand the difference between moving images that engage their humanity and their intelligence, and moving images that are just selling them something.”
Last week, Twentieth Century Fox was the first major studio to release a trailer tailored for Vine, Twitter’s six second video service.
The Vine trailer was the first glimpse of the movie, due for release 26 July. It created a huge buzz on the internet, with over 600 retweets from followers of the @wolverinemovie account, reaching over 20k people. With a predicted box office of £15m in the UK, The Wolverine is set to continue the commercial success of the X-Men franchise, which has now taken over $1b worldwide. The audience are predicted to be predominately affluent males, aged between 25-34.
Although May to July is traditionally known as Summer blockbuster season, this year sees an unusually high number of upmarket arthouse releases. Coming out on the same weekend as Iron Man 3 (April 26) are two all-star features with a strong comedic slant. Bernie earned a Golden Globe nomination for Jack Black’s performance and is [...]
The Croods 3D proved a prehistoric sized hit this weekend opening with a sizeable £5.4m (including £1.9m from previews). The Friday to Sunday total of £3.5m puts it just behind Oz: The Great And Powerful in fourth place in the biggest opening weekends of the year. 44.9% of The Croods’ gross came from 3D presentations.
Another big family film opened in second spot as fantasy epic, Jack The Giant Slayer 3D debuted with £1.6m. Although that’s a disappointing start, the upcoming Easter holidays should provide a boost. Oz: The Great And Powerful 3D made it a trio of family films in the top three as a further £1.3m took its cume to £10.1m.
Hello Exhibitors
Here we are coming towards the end of March and with no sign of spring appearing on the horizon. I am wondering where spring has gone. In spite of the cold, perfect cinema going weather, admissions in February dipped 8.8% to14m.
The good news however is that, thanks to a phenomenal January, cinema is still up by 7.5% year on year compared to 2012, exceeding 31m admissions in the first two months of 2013.
I very much enjoyed Song for Marion last week and quite by chance happened to pass Terence Stamp in Brewer Street on the same day I saw the movie. Quite a coincidence. I also saw Jude Law in Side Effects which I was thought was excellent and having belatedly seen Ben Affleck’s Argo, I can now appreciate why the movie picked up the major Oscar. What a tense, gripping movie with Affleck directing and acting superbly.
Congratulations to the Gala Cinema in Durham on its conversion to digital last week.
The centrepiece of Durham’s arts programme, the Gala Theatre is situated in a beautiful, purpose-built, £15m building on the banks of the river Wear in the heart of this historic city. The venue houses a state-of-the-art modern theatre, spacious and comfortable café-bar, two cinema screens and superb conference facilities.
DCM Tuesdays made it to event number ten this week and celebrated with our biggest screening yet. In conjunction with the inaugural London AdWeek, we screened stylish Brit thriller Welcome To The Punch to a packed audience at the May Fair Hotel and preceded it with a Q&A with the film’s producer Rory Aitken.
Oz: The Great And Powerful 3D had a solid hold at the top of the box office, easing just 30% to £2.6m and a cume of £7.7m. Alice In Wonderland also experienced a decline of 30% on its second weekend. A solid hold suggests strong word of mouth for Oz and bodes well for the coming weeks.
In the packed Run Run Shaw theatre at BAFTA, Andy Law of Fearlessly Frank led the DCM workshop, The Art Of Cinematic Storytelling, including Asif Kapadia, Director of Senna and The Warrior, Mike Bennett, CEO/Founder of OIL Studios and Ed Edwards, Creative Director, Writer and Director at Havas Worldwide.
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