The winners: family films
While glorious sunshine at the weekend created very tough conditions for cinema operators across the UK, the Easter school holiday delivered up an audience for titles with a clear family positioning. DreamWorks Animation’s The Boss Baby posted £2.8m for the weekend period, just ahead of Beauty and the Beast’s £2.76m. However, a very aggressive previews strategy meant that The Boss Baby added takings from the preceding six days (1-6 April), essentially creating a nine-day opening “weekend” figure of £8.03m. In the same nine-day period, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast earned £12.21m.
Beauty and the Beast’s total now stands at a towering £58.5m, making it the 14th biggest hit of all time at the UK box office, ahead of titles including Casino Royale and The Dark Knight Rises, as well as six of the eight Harry Potter films.
Peppa Pig: My First Cinema Experience rounds out the top three, with a UK opening of £1.05m. The film’s title suggests that this is the first big-screen outing for the reliably profitable piglet; however, Peppa Pig: The Golden Boots debuted at UK cinemas in February 2015 with £687,000, on its way to a total of £2.33m. Both films are episode compilations – all exclusive and new in the case of the latest toddler-targeted assemblage.
The losers: adult comedies
While families seem by and large to have stuck with planned cinema outings at the weekend, adults stayed away in droves, with big drops for titles such as Ghost in the Shell, Jake Gyllenhaal sci-fi Life and Ben Wheatley’s trigger-happy Free Fire. Among new releases, audiences were thin for old-geezer comedy Going in Style, starring Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Alan Arkin – opening tally was a not-so-stylish £569,000 from 454 cinemas. The Anna Kendrick wedding comedy Table 19 opened ignominiously in 12th place, with £131,000 from 221 cinemas, and a puny site average of £591.
The indie battle: A Quiet Passion v Raw v I Am Not Your Negro
Three very different films battled to be crowned king of the arthouses at the weekend, with honours pretty even. Ignoring previews from consideration, only a few thousand pounds separated the weekend totals of Raul Peck’s historical documentary I Am Not Your Negro (£54,600), Terence Davies’ Emily Dickinson biopic A Quiet Passion (£52,100) and Julia Ducournau’s sexy French horror Raw (£48,800). I Am Not Your Negro, on the fewest screens among the trio, achieved the highest site average for the weekend.
Also fighting for a piece of the action was the Chilean biopic Neruda, from Jackie director Pablo Larraín – the film debuted with £28,400 from 26 cinemas. Contemporary London crime drama City of Tiny Lights was the emphatic loser of this week’s crop of indie flicks, with £15,700 from 57 cinemas for the weekend period. A big problem it faced: indie cinemas, its natural home, had plenty of other titles to choose from, and audiences were always unlikely to find it in multiplexes. The sunshine then sealed the fate for the picture, which stars Riz Ahmed and Billie Piper.
The steady player: Secret Cinema
One film that wasn’t at all affected by the sun was Secret Cinema’s presentation of Moulin Rouge! The event is essentially sold out every day, so takings barely fluctuate week to week – the latest session was up 2% at £202,000, for an eight-week total of £2.53m. The run for this event was initially scheduled to end after 11 weeks on 30 April, but it has now been extended by another six weeks to 11 June. This edition of Secret Cinema looks headed for a final gross north of £5m, which compares with £18.5m for the original nationwide cinema release in 2001.
The market
Despite the strong sunshine, takings matched the previous frame (a modest 4% rise, in fact), although that’s really all down to those whopping Boss Baby previews inflating the numbers – strip them out, and you’d see a significant drop. Takings are also 33% up on the equivalent session from 2016, when The Huntsman: Winter’s War debuted at the top spot. Expect another big cash win for cinemas with the arrival on Wednesday 12 April of The Fate of the Furious.
Top 10 films, 7-9 April
1. The Boss Baby, £8,025,886 from 598 sites (new)
2. Beauty and the Beast, £2,759,448 from 677 sites. Total: £58,485,266 (four weeks)
3. Peppa Pig: My First Cinema Experience, £1,050,962 from 531 sites
4. Ghost in the Shell, £725,720 from 551 sites. Total: £4,161,002 (two weeks)
5. Get Out, £596,746 from 399 sites. Total: £8,046,042 (four weeks)
6. Going in Style, £569,392 from 454 sites (new)
7. Smurfs: The Lost Village, £376,547 from 542 sites. Total: £2,430,688 (two weeks)
8. Power Rangers, £345,796 from 486 sites. Total: £3,931,439 (three weeks)
9. Kong: Skull Island, £328,692 from 365 sites. Total: £15,178,158 (five weeks)
10. Logan, £234,304 from 280 sites. Total: £23,329,028 (seven weeks)
Other openers
Table 19, £130,602 from 221 sites
I Am Not Your Negro, £86,908 (including £32,280 previews) from 46 sites
A Quiet Passion, £79,334 (including £27,261 previews) from 49 sites
Raw, £67,042 (including £17,053 previews) from 77 sites
Kaatru Veliyiadi, £47,956 from 27 sites
A Hero of Our Time – Bolshoi Ballet, £43,130 from 175 sites
Neruda, £40,490 (including £12,103 previews) from 26 sites
City of Tiny Lights, £28,038 (including £12,351 previews) from 57 sites
Mad to Be Normal, £23,008 (including £14,625 previews) from nine sites
Take Off, £17,175 from 16 sites
Who’s Gonna Love Me Now?, £11,495 (including £10,449 previews) from five sites
A Dark Song, £3,911 from nine sites
The Spacewalker, £2,640 from 10 sites
Sonsuz Ask, £1,638 from three sites
Urvi, £34 from one site (Ireland only)
• Thanks to comScore. All figures relate to takings in UK and Ireland cinemas.