Just a quick look at last weekend’s box office as we head into the new weekend:
1. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: £1.6 million (NEW)
2. District 9: £.8 million (3rd week; drops 32%)
3. Gamer: £.6 million (NEW)
4. 500 Days of Summer: £.5 million (3rd week; drops 12%)
5. The Final Destination: £.48 million (4th week; drops 48%)
(actual numbers, not estimates)
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]
It was gorgeous weather across much of the UK last weekend. I guess that people wanted to make the most of it as we really haven’t had a decent summer.
It’s really nice today also. If that holds for the weekend, I predict more low numbers. I don’t know if the weather has more effect in the UK than the USA, or if it is a consistent factor, but perhaps it should be factored in when evaluating the numbers?