Video game movies are once again back on to top of the box office as Street Fighter opened with £2.3m. Mortal Kombat II opened in May this year with £1.5m, so Street Fighter has easily surpassed that and with half-term next week there should be more to come. For those old enough to remember the last Street Fighter film, it finished its run with £2.3m in 1995.
Forgotten Island opened in second with £1.3m. This time last year the October half-term family film was Gabby’s Dollhouse, which opened with £1.7m and finished its run with £6m, so hopefully that’s a realistic target for Forgotten Island.
South Asian cinema is back in the top five, as Jailer 2 opened with £1.1m, which includes £400k in previews after opening on Thursday. The first Jailer finished its run with £1.3m, so this sequel looks like setting a total comfortably ahead of that.
Verity came in fourth on its third weekend, adding £1m, which takes its total to £9.4m. It’s now comfortably the second biggest film adapted from a Colleen Hoover, behind 2024’s It Ends With Us, which finished on £21.9m. The last Colleen Hoover film in cinemas, Reminders Of Him, finished on £4.5m, so Verity has more than doubled that.
Other Mommy rounded out the top five, adding £924k on its second weekend, which is down 54% from last weekend. That takes its total after 10 days in cinemas to £3.8m. With Halloween next week, it should have a good couple of days next week.
Outside of the top five, Whalefall opened in seventh with £508k. Austin Abrams plays the lead in Whalefall and he’s recently been seen as the lead in Resident Evil, which is now up to an impressive £13.6m.
Next Weekend
- Wildwood is the latest film from stop-motion studio, Laika. It follows the adventures of Prue McKeel as she sets off to the forests outside Portland to find her kidnapped brother.
Ghosts: The Possession Of Button House is the big screen adaptation of the hugely popular BBC sitcom.
- Clayface is a horror-thriller in the DC Universe. Rising Hollywood star Matt Hagen devolves into a horrifying revenge-filled monster when scientific ambition strips him of his identity and humanity.
- Klara And The Sun is the latest film from Taika Waititi (The Hunt For The Wilderpeople, Thor: Ragnarok). Jenna Ortega plays a robot girl designed to prevent loneliness who tries to save a heartbroken family of humans.
- Ali G: Who Iz I? is a new big screen film featuring Sacha Baron Cohen’s comedy character.
- Fatherland is a drama set in the aftermath of World War II. At the height of the Cold War, Fatherland centres on the relationship between the writer Thomas Mann and his daughter Erika - actress, writer and rally driver - as they embark on a road trip in a black Buick cruiser across a Germany in ruins.
- Tad And The Magic Lamp is a family animation featuring the intrepid explorer.
The Buzz
Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew is Greta Gerwig’s long-awaited follow-up to Barbie (one half of Barbenheimer). Two children discover a wood full of pools leading to other worlds. One takes them to a dead city beneath a dying sun, where they wake a queen who exterminated its population and accidentally bring her back to London. Gerwig is one of the most exciting voices to emerge in blockbuster cinema in the 21st century and she is giving a unique perspective on C.S. Lewis’s much loved novel. The cast in includes Daniel Craig, Carey Mulligan, and Emma Mackey and the first trailer is one of the most striking of the year. It should be one of the biggest films of H1 when it hits cinemas on Thursday, 11 February. Here’s the first trailer: https://youtu.be/mZgB5D74ivc?si=Pasb6Q_V9lVWGfw8.
Across The Pond
Street Fighter opened in the top spot in North America too, opening with $31m. A24 documentary, You Can See Everything opened with an incredible $15m, from just 855 screens. That’s one of the biggest openings of all-time for a documentary. Other Mommy fell to second, adding $8.4m for a new total of $44.9m. Whalefall opened in fourth with $8m, while Sense And Sensibility opened in fifth with $7.3m.