U.K. box office: ‘Night at the Museum 2’ wins big, sort of

These are three-day numbers, which do not include takings for the bank-holiday Monday -- I wish they did, but there’s only this limited info available. But over the three days in the U.S. and Canada, Museum 2 earned at little over $54 million, and so we might have expected it to debut in the U.K. at around £5.4 million.

For the first time this year, the British box office is down significantly from last year, off 30 percent, even with the pretty big debut of Night at the Museum 2. I was gonna say that that had to be one of the biggest bows of the year, and it is, but it’s far from the biggest, and actually looks sorta lame compared to the huge numbers new movies have been debuting to in the U.K. in May alone:

Wolverine: £6.7 million
Angels & Demons: £6 million
Star Trek: £5.9 million

The other movies with bigger debuts in the U.K. so far this year:

Bolt: £5.5 million (February)
Fast & Furious: £4.9 million (April)
Marley & Me: £4.4 million (March)
Monsters vs. Aliens: £4.3 million (April)

Museum 2 doesn’t have any major competition this coming weekend, which means it may hold up fine. We’ll see.

[numbers via UK Film Council]