U.K. box office: ‘Up’ keeps floating along

With Up doing so phenomenally well in the U.K. -- as well as in other locales around the globe; it was No. 1 last weekend in Italy and the Netherlands, too -- its worldwide take is now over half a billion dollars. The film held in its second week far better than it did in North America, when it dropped 35 percent. Dunno what that means, except that maybe as the Great Recession gets worse and worse, Up feels better and better. When it hits Region 1 DVD in a couple of weeks, it should soar even higher.

It’s sorta interesting to see how Invention of Lying and Zombieland are performing in opposite directions on either side of the Atlantic: the Ricky Gervais satire is holding strong in the U.K., not so much in the U.S. and Canada; the horror comedy is dropping much faster in Britain than it did in North America, where it lost only 40 percent of its business in its second week here. I dunno what that means, either, except that Brits like Gervais less than they like zombies, and North Americans like zombies more than Gervais. Go know.

Interestingly, though, overall business was up 36 percent over the same weekend last year, an almost identical jump as North America saw last weekend, with a somewhat different slate of movies on offer. Maybe that’s related to the Great Recession, too: people are escaping to the movies.

[numbers via UK Film Council]