U.K. box office: ‘Cloudy’ partly sunny

It’s always nice to win the box office race, one supposes, but the top spot for Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs at the British box office comes with a lot of caveats. The opening was less than half than might have been expected based on the North American opening of $30.3 million, which should have translated to around £3 million in the U.K. And even though overall business was off only 9 percent over the same weekend last year, in the rolling 52-week ranking, this weekend clocks in at 51, so it’s almost the slowest weekend in a year.

We could be generous and call it a select crowd at the movies this weekend, and of that small group, most of them did chose Cloudy. The film had the best per-screen average of the week, by far, among wide releases: £3,615 at each of 438 cinemas. (Its next nearest competitor was Gamer, with £1,854 at each of 346 locations.) But the best per-screen average overall -- £4,064 on each of 34 screens -- went to Dil Bole Haddipa!, a Bollywood take on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, about a girl who pretends to be a boy so she can play on a cricket team. (Sounds like a lot of fun.)

[numbers via UK Film Council]