Theory of Everything finds winning formula at UK box office
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Version 0 of 1. The winner January traditionally sees the beginning of the annual awards-movie binge, with Oscar-bait now coming thick and fast until the middle of February. First out of the gate were The Theory of Everything and Birdman, both hoping to grab some vital box-office before audiences become overwhelmed with choice. The victor in round one is The Theory of Everything, with a stunning £3.75m from a broad 532 cinemas, including £803,000 in New Year’s Day previews. Sections of the British media have presented this year’s best-actor race as a battle between Theory’s Eddie Redmayne and The Imitation Game’s Benedict Cumberbatch. The Imitation Game kicked off in November with £2.74m, including £47,000 in previews. Ignoring previews, Theory is running 9% ahead of Imitation at the same stage of its run. After a disappointing 2014 (see below), UK cinema owners will be very happy with the start to 2015. Exactly a year ago, American Hustle expanded from a tiny West End London platform to full UK release, grossing £3.47m, including £1.11m in previews. Excluding previews, Theory is running 25% ahead of Hustle’s first session of wide play. The runner-up Dropping 24% from the previous session, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies falls from the top spot after three weeks at the chart summit. In fact, the news for backers Warners/New Line is better than that. If New Year’s Day previews for The Theory of Everything are left out of the picture, Five Armies retains pole position for a fourth week, with £3.25m weekend box-office. The cumulative total is now £36.75m, which is about 2% down on its predecessor, The Desolation of Smaug, at the same stage of its run. Five Armies will now shed screens and showtimes as cinema bookers struggle to accommodate the onslaught of new films, but it should crack £40m. Smaug maxed out at £42.9m. All shall have prizes The first weekend in January invariably sees riches spread widely across a mix of titles, as families visit the cinema one last time before the kids go back to school and the awards contenders start to arrive. In 2014, the first session of the year saw no fewer than eight films taking more than £1m; 2015 has repeated the feat (see top 10 films chart, below). Alongside Theory of Everything and Five Armies, star performer is Paddington, up a handy 11%. To be grossing £2.8m in the sixth weekend of release is exceptional, as is the film’s cumulative total of £30.82m. That’s enough to make Paddington the fifth-biggest 2014 release, behind Five Armies (£36.75m so far), The Lego Movie (£34.34m), The Inbetweeners 2 (£33.39m) and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (£32.72m). Look for Paddington to overtake a few more of those 2014 hits in the coming weeks. Another notable riser is Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, up 10%. After a slow start, the film is recovering, and has reached £9.69m so far. Annie did even better, rising 20% from its previous session, albeit with a smaller total. Penguins of Madagascar, which props up the top 10, rose 23%. Look for all these family films to fall in the next session. The genre hit Providing an alternative to the upscale fare and family films on offer, The Woman in Black: Angel of Death landed with a nifty £2.43m, including £547,000 in previews. That’s down on the opening number for the first Woman in Black (£3.15m), but that’s understandable in the circumstances. The original Woman in Black benefited from high awareness of the Susan Hill book, the long-running stage play and lead actor Daniel Radcliffe. Assuming a modest production budget and some foreign success, Angel of Death looks profitable for Hammer and backers eOne. The awards-race alternative While The Theory of Everything had the middlebrow audience sewn up, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman offered an alternative for more adventurous cinemagoers, encouraged by critical acclaim and awards attention. Fox released the film on a five-screen platform beginning Boxing Day, achieving £133,000 over even days. The film debuted with a strong £1.52m from 259 screens, including £369,000 in previews (earned from the platform release plus wider play on 1 January). This is the first Iñárritu film ever to debut at £1m-plus. Both Babel and 21 Grams landed around the £580,000-£590,000 mark, from a release about half the size of Birdman’s. Iñárritu’s last film, the Spanish-language Biutiful, enjoyed a more limited release. The year in review Data gatherer Rentrak has issued its official box-office report for 2014, showing receipts for the UK and Ireland 2.9% down on 2013. That’s the biggest annual dip since tracking began in 1991. Top grosser for the year is The Lego Movie, with £34.3m. That means that 2014 has ended with no film breaking the £40m barrier, for the first time since 1998, although Five Armies should reach that milestone before it completes its run. However, every year since 1998 has witnessed at least one film cracking £45m (last year’s was Despicable Me 2), so 2014 will probably go down as yielding the lowest-grossing top film for 16 years: we will know for sure when Five Armies completes its run. As Rentrak’s UK boss Lucy Jones comments, 2014 lacked the major event movies that “motivate irregular cinema-goers to book that ticket”, and it’s true that the large section of the UK population that hardly ever goes to the cinema wasn’t very motivated to do so in 2014. When a film comes along that engages this audience, the rewards can be enormous – £103m in the case of Skyfall, for instance. The future Thanks to the wealth of riches spread across so many titles, takings were 25% up on the Boxing Day weekend, and 7% up on the equivalent session from 2013, which was considered a fantastic period for cinemagoing at the time. Overall, the weekend of 2-4 January ranks third for the past year, beaten only by the frames that saw the arrival of The Inbetweeners 2 and a previews-inflated Transformers: Age of Extinction. Cinema bookers are now faced with a tough challenge trying to keep all the films on-screen, while making room for fresh arrivals Into the Woods, Foxcatcher and Taken 3. It’s only going to get harder as January develops, yielding some tough negotiations in the holdover sessions every Monday morning. Top 10 films, 2-4 January 1. The Theory of Everything, £3,749,293 from 532 sites (new) 2. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, £3,246,845 from 531 sites. Total: £36,748,786 3. Paddington, £2,834,003 from 584 sites. Total: £30,818,050 4. The Woman in Black: Angel of Death, £2,431,823 from 443 sites (new) 5. Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, £1,736,233 from 521 sites. Total: £9,694,189 6. Exodus: Gods and Kings, £1,575,131 from 503 sites. Total: £6,362,743 7. Birdman, £1,524,667 from 259 sites (new) 8. Annie, £1,347,598 from 356 sites. Total: £5,373,045 9. Dumb and Dumber To, £752,738 from 377 sites. Total: £5,540,013 10. Penguins of Madagascar, £629,774 from 463 sites. Total: £7,110,994 Other openers Enemy, £20,937 from 13 sites Mucize, £13,325 from 2 sites Are You Here, £11,560 from 10 sites The Green Ray, £5,581 from 3 sites (rerelease) Vellaikaara Durai, £5,554 from 4 sites Dying of the Light, £214 from 5 sites • Thanks to Rentrak |