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The Weekend Round-up
- Glass delivers nothing but pane for the rest of the top 10 this week, opening at the top of the pile this week with £3.4m, and shattering Split’s opening total of £2.5m to become M. Night Shyamalan’s second-highest opening after Signs, which opened with £3.7m. It now looks like Glass has a crack at competing with Signs’ final total of £16m.
- Mary Queen of Scots is the second new entry of the week, opening with a regal £2.1m, which is just about on par with the 3-day opening of comparative awards’ season release The Favourite. The battle of the period dramas is on – Kiera Knightley is firing her agent as we speak.
- Stan & Ollie is ironically very hard to make puns about, and dropped 26% from its opening weekend, adding £1.7m to take its cumulative total to £6m – a solid total for a solid film
- A spoonful of recent releases helps Mary Poppins Returns go down to fourth place this week, adding £1.79m to take its running total to £40.7m.
- The Favourite completes the top five with a weekend total of £1.3m, take its cumulative total to £11.1m. This is 45% ahead of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (£7.6m) at the same point of release.
- Outside of the top five, Bohemian Rhapsody became the fifth title released in 2018 to gross over £50m, and has now become the fourth-highest release of 2018, with Black Panther becoming another one to bite the dust.
Overall, the box office is up 4% from last weekend and ranks 27th out of the latest 52 weekends. It is down 23% versus the same weekend last year, at which point eight titles grossed over £1m, four of them making over £2m with Coco leading at No.1 with £3.3m. The year to date after three weekends, 2019 is 15% behind 2018.
Next Weekend
- Vice explores the epic story about how a bureaucratic Washington insider quietly became the most powerful man in the world as Vice-President to George W. Bush, reshaping the country and the globe in ways that we still feel today.
- The Mule stars Clint Eastwood as Earl Stone as a man in his 80s who is broke, alone, and facing foreclosure of his business when he is offered a job that simply requires him to drive. Easy enough, but, unbeknownst to Earl, he's just signed on as a drug courier for a Mexican cartel.
- Destroyer is a riveting and gritty crime thriller starring Oscar-winner Nicole Kidman as a hardened detective worn down to the nub by the rigors of her job and the aftermath of an undercover FBI sting gone horribly wrong.
- Second Act stars Jennifer Lopez as Maya a 40-year-old woman struggling with frustrations from unfulfilled dreams - until she gets the chance to prove to Madison Avenue that street smarts are as valuable as book smarts, and that it is never too late for a 'Second Act'.
The Buzz
How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World is the final instalment of the popular animation franchise, and looks to be living up to the quality of the previous two efforst. Peter Debruge writes in Variety “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World packs the emotional heft of the dozen or so years it has taken to get this far, tracking the loss of one parent, the discovery of another, and several momentous lessons in bravery and loyalty along the way.” Michael Rechtshaffen adds in the Hollywood Reporter “All told, by the time How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World nears the end of its Harry Potter-esque closing trajectory, in which Hiccup must learn how to let go, the bittersweet result will have audiences finding it equally hard to say goodbye.” How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World is released in UK cinemas on 1 February.
Across The Pond
Glass opened at the top of the box office on both sides of the pond, with an opening total of $40.6m in the United States. The Upside slid down to second place in its second place, adding $15.6m to take its total to $42.99m. Animated effort Dragon Ball Super: Broly opened with $10.7m in third place, whereas fourth place was occupied by Aquaman, which added $10m to take its total to $304m. The top five was completed by Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, which added $7.3m to take its total to $158m.