The winner: The House With a Clock in Its Walls
The robustly reliable family market propelled the latest production from Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment to the top of the UK box office, with £2.3m for the weekend period for The House With a Clock in Its Walls, and £3.37m including previews from the previous Saturday and Sunday. Local distributor Entertainment One should be content with that result.
The film faced the challenge of a 12A certificate, which might have put off some families with younger children. However, a cast including Jack Black and Cate Blanchett, with Eli Roth in the director’s chair, might have helped to position the film more appealingly for an adult audience. Source material is John Bellairs’ 1973 novel of the same title – the first in a series of 12 books featuring the orphan Lewis Barnavelt.
The film opened in the US with $26.6m (£20.2m), so the UK number is in line with that outcome. Recent Amblin productions include Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Ready Player One, The Post, A Dog’s Purpose and The BFG. The last of those titles seems the most relevant yardstick for this new film, but the huge local popularity of author Roald Dahl invalidates the comparison. The BFG began in the UK with £5.29m in July 2016.
The runner-up: A Simple Favour
Recent commercial precedents for a darkly comic missing-person thriller are difficlut to pinpoint, and director Paul Feig is best known for pure comedies featuring Melissa McCarthy, so the commercial outcome for his A Simple Favour was hard to call. Lead actor Anna Kendrick is relatively unproved outside the Pitch Perfect franchise, and co-star Blake Lively remains best known for TV’s Gossip Girl.
Given these factors, distributor Lionsgate should easily be happy with a £1.32m opening, and £1.62m including previews. The film is based on a novel by Darcey Bell, and Lionsgate was happy to push any associations with Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train – differently toned films adapted from bestsellers with female-skewing audiences. A Simple Favour was never going to perform at the level of those two hits.
It faced competition for its date-night adult audience from Crazy Rich Asians, with which it shares its leading man, Henry Golding. Crazy Rich Asians dropped 26%, for second-weekend takings of £1.14m and a total after 10 days of £3.58m.
The disappointment: Mile 22
Director Peter Berg has built a steady partnership with actor Mark Wahlberg since 2013, producing a trio of muscular films based on real-life events: Lone Survivor, Deepwater Horizon and Patriots Day. Mile 22 takes the pair into a purely fictional realm and thus into franchise potential, focusing on an elite US intelligence officer leading a covert tactical command unit. But if the response of UK audiences is representative, sequels now appear unlikely.
Mile 22 opened in the territory with £559,000 for the weekend period and £796,000 including Wednesday and Thursday previews – only enough for sixth place in the chart. The film maxed out at an uninspiring $36m at US cinemas following its mid-August release.
The arrival of The House With a Clock in Its Walls had no measurable effect on existing family films in the marketplace. In fact, Disney’s Christopher Robin, Incredibles 2 and Hotel Transylvania 3: A Monster Vacation delivered the strongest holds of any major titles. Compared with the previous weekend, takings for the trio were respectively down 7%, up 1% and dead even. The rainy weather on Saturday and Sunday seems to have been particularly kind to this sector of the market, as families evidently looked to their local multiplex to keep kids entertained.
The market
For the third weekend in a row, takings were down on the equivalent session from 2017, and September appears to be trailing the pace of a year ago by around 20%. The month is traditionally a weak period for UK cinemagoing, but 2017 benefited from the Stephen King adaptation It, which notched up £32.3m and was the year’s ninth biggest hit.
Cinema bookers have big hopes pinned on next month, which brings both A Star Is Born and Venom on 3 October, Johnny English Strikes Again two days later, and then the likes of Damien Chazelle’s First Man, David Gordon Green’s Halloween and Bryan Singer’s Bohemian Rhapsody. Meanwhile, there is one more weekend of September to struggle through – which offers the comedy Night School starring Kevin Hart and hot talent du jour Tiffany Haddish. Alternatives include Glenn Close in The Wife, which looks likely to connect with older and upscale audiences.
Top 10 films September 21-23
1. The House With a Clock in Its Walls, £3,370,591 from 541 sites (new)
2. A Simple Favour, £1,621,900 from 480 sites (new)
3. Crazy Rich Asians, £1,142,208 from 542 sites. Total: £3,575,569 (2 weeks)
4. King of Thieves, £1,121,883 from 526 sites. Total: £3,737,376 (2 weeks)
5. The Nun, £1,021,628 from 490 sites. Total: £9,497,601 (3 weeks)
6. Mile 22, £795,888 from 376 sites (new)
7. The Predator, £677,078 from 532 sites. Total: £3,886,572 (2 weeks)
8. Disney’s Christopher Robin, £486,411 from 535 sites. Total: £13,837,384 (6 weeks)
9. Incredibles 2, £348,660 from 460 sites. Total: £55,254,076 (11 weeks)
10. Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, £326,987 from 465 sites. Total: £64,872,422 (10 weeks)
Other openers
The Little Stranger, £300,089 from 296 sites
The Intent 2: The Come Up, £149,392 from 80 sites
Batti Gul Meter Chalu, £58,507 from 52 sites
Faces, Places, £49,529 from 34 sites
Qismat, £48,117 from 10 sites
Matangi/Maya/MIA, £43,130 from 39 sites
Saamy 2, £31,507 from 43 sites
Climax, £29,816 from 31 sites
The Godfather, £16,590 from 9 sites (reissue)
The Big Lebowski, £7,834 from 6 sites
Nureyev, £6,828 from 1 site
Theevandi, £2,763 from 11 sites
Where Do We Go From Here?, £2,746 from 1 site
The Captain, £1,109 from 1 site
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