Minions easily overpower Terminator at the UK box office
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Version 0 of 1. The winner: Minions Easily resisting the challenge of the latest Terminator and Magic Mike films, Minions held on to the top spot with second-frame takings of £6.24m, a 46% decline on the opening weekend. After 10 days, the yellow urchins have amassed an impressive £20.97m in the UK, with a continuing clear run at family audiences until Pixar’s Inside Out arrives on 24 July. After two weekends of play, Despicable Me 2 stood at a higher £22.91m, although the comparison is not quite apt, since Universal pursued a paid-previews strategy with that film, so this was a 12-day figure. Minions has already passed the lifetime total of the original Despicable Me (£20.2m). Second-weekend takings for Despicable Me 2 were just shy of £4m, so Minions is already exhibiting sturdier legs than its franchise predecessor. It will need them: Inside Out is likely to pose a more potent threat than the equivalent title – Monsters University – did in the summer of 2013. Minions is already past the lifetime totals of animated hits such as Tangled (£20.5m), Kung Fu Panda (£20.3m) and Happy Feet (£19.2m). Universal will be hoping to match Despicable Me 2’s final tally of £47.5m. The runner-up: Terminator Genisys With a debut of £3.79m including £716,000 in previews, Terminator Genisys has left the starting blocks behind the pace of its predecessor in the franchise. Terminator: Salvation began with £6.94m, including £2.16m in previews, in 2009, on its way to a lifetime total of £14.24m. Top performer for the franchise in terms of box office was 2003’s Terminator: Rise of the Machines, with £18.9m. If adjusted for inflation, 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day (£18.2m) would be a convincing winner. So far, fans are rating Terminator Genisys much more generously than critics, with a 7.1/10 IMDb user rating, compared to a 39/100 MetaCritic score. The documentary hit: Amy With £397,000 from 133 cinemas, plus £127,000 in previews, Amy has already cleared more than £500,000 in the UK, the biggest ever debut for a British documentary, not counting concert films such as One Direction: This Is Us. Asif Kapadia’s previous documentary, Senna, began with £375,000 from a tighter rollout at 67 cinemas, eventually reaching £3.17m. The biggest ever opening in the UK for a non-concert documentary, regardless of country of origin, was achieved in 2004 by Fahrenheit 9/11. Michael Moore’s film began with £1.30m, on its way to a total of £6.55m. Given Amy Winehouse’s committed fanbase, the relative recentness of her death and the controversies that have greeted the film, Amy was always likely to see a strong opening, as core audiences rushed to see it. The challenge for distributor Altitude is now to broaden the appeal, emphasising Amy’s admired qualities (83/100 at MetaCritic) and the pedigree of triple Bafta winner Kapadia. The last non-concert documentary to reach £1m in the UK was 2012’s The Imposter, with £1.13m – and the same year Marley came close with £991,000. Amy looks a dead cert to exceed the box office of both those two films, but matching Senna’s huge total is a big ask. The healthy previews tally for Amy includes a live Q&A screening with Kapadia, satellite-beamed from London’s Picturehouse Central to 285 cinemas on 30 June, as well as a two-night Secret Cinema special at London club Koko. The sequel: Magic Mike XXL After Pitch Perfect 2 performed far ahead of the original Pitch Perfect film, lightning looked set to strike twice this summer with the sequel to Magic Mike. Distributor Warners pursued an aggressive marketing campaign, presenting the saucily titled Magic Mike XXL as a more fun follow-up to the intermittently gritty original, and spreading the spotlight to hard-bodied cast members including Joe Manganiello. Magic Mike XXL’s opening weekend of £1.58m is certainly nothing for anyone to be ashamed of, but it falls a little short of the original Magic Mike’s initial spurt of £1.65m plus just over £1m in previews. XXL will need strong word-of-mouth to push past Magic Mike’s lifetime tally of £8.4m. The silver lining for Warners is that XXL looks well-positioned to play to female pairs and groups, so should prove robust in midweek, when the “girls’ night out” market is particularly strong. The live events: William Tell and Secret Cinema The Royal Opera House’s latest production William Tell may have spilled over from arts pages to news pages, thanks to its controversial gang-rape scene, but the media hoopla seems not to have helped the production net a bigger cinema audience. The Rossini opera was beamed into 351 cinemas on Sunday, grossing £114,000. For comparison, the previous ROH production La Bohème achieved £340,000 when it went out to cinemas on June 10. Following a dip of 3% with the previous frame, takings now bounce back by 6% for Secret Cinema: The Empire Strikes Back. The latest session’s tally of £293,000 is the highest achieved so far in the run. After 28 play dates, cumulative box-office stands at £1.79m, with another 72 shows yet to occur. The blockbuster event looks on course to achieve £6.4m by the end of the run. The future Comparisons with the equivalent session a year ago are hard to make, since the official Rentrak chart omitted takings for Transformers: Age of Extinction, which played on Saturday and Sunday that weekend, grossing a reported £4.7m. Absent those figures, top new entry was Melissa McCarthy comedy misfire Tammy, and overall the market recorded one of the worst weekend tallies of 2014. The latest session is a misleading 160% up on that dismal frame, powered by the likes of Minions and Terminator Genisys. (Incidentally, Transformers: Age of Extinction’s official release date was Thursday 10 July last year. Distributor Paramount suddenly opted for a more aggressive previews strategy after England’s early exit from the World Cup.) For the upcoming frame, a relatively quiet session should see Ted 2 open robustly, given the £30m lifetime achieved by the original Ted. Also in the mix: Love & Mercy, focusing on two periods in the life of Beach Boy Brian Wilson; Dustin Hoffman in The Choir; animation Song of the Sea; horror sequel The Human Centipede 3 (Final Sequence); and US comedy Dear White People. Top 10 films, 3-5 July 1. Minions, £6,238,498 from 586 sites. Total: £20,973,912 2. Terminator Genisys, £3,793,617 from 536 sites (new) 3. Jurassic World, £2,610,612 from 568 sites. Total: £53,774,343 4. Magic Mike XXL, £1,575,092 from 498 sites (new) 5. Amy, £523,192 from 133 sites (new) 6. Spy, £304,610 from 331 sites. Total: £9,226,407 7. Secret Cinema: The Empire Strikes Back, £293,275 from 1 site. Total: £1,793,215 8. Guillaume Tell: Royal Opera House, £114,673 from 351 sites (new) 9. Mr Holmes, £113,635 from 306 sites. Total: £2,074,435 10. Knock Knock, £66,685 from 200 sites. Total: £471,766 Other openers Papanasam, £32,176 from 18 sites Second Hand Husband, £16,732 from 25 sites Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles, £3,188 from 13 sites Still the Water, £1,562 from seven sites La Grande Bouffe, £1,144 from five sites (rerelease) The First Film, £267 from one site (+ £3,260 preview) • Thanks to Rentrak |