The winner
Just when it looked as if September was going to go by without a single film opening above £2m, Looper arrives to kick some much-needed life into a sickly UK box office. Its three-day gross of £2.43m is hardly record-shattering, but following a run of films opening around or under £1m – Killing Them Softly, The Sweeney, Dredd, Lawless, Anna Karenina – it is welcome news for the nation's cinema chains. It's also a new benchmark for Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a lead role. Premium Rushrecently debuted with a disappointing £115,000 from 159 cinemas. Last November, 50/50, co-starring Seth Rogen, kicked off with £410,000 from 228 venues. In 2009, (500) Days of Summer began its run with £1.24m, including £383,000 in previews. Debuts of films such as Inception andThe Dark Knight Rises, where Gordon-Levitt is not the lead actor, are, of course, much higher. Bruce Willis and Emily Blunt contributed additional marketable elements to Looper, although it's likely that the genre, high concept and reputation of the film played the biggest roles in stimulating audience interest.
Looper has achieved the biggest opening for a live-action film based on original characters since Ted in early August, and is one of few pictures not based on existing material to debut above £2m this year; the others being The Iron Lady, The Dictator and Safe House. You can add Chronicle and Magic Mike to that list if those films' preview takings are included in their opening-weekend tallies. The Iron Lady had the advantage of pre-existing awareness of its subject, although the screenplay qualifies as original.
Director Rian Johnson has previously enjoyed a notably patchy record at the UK box office. His last film, The Brothers Bloom, debuted with a weak £36,500 from 23 screens. Before that, Brick did a lot better, beginning its run with £143,000 from 43 cinemas.
The chasing pack
Dipping just 12%, stop-motion animation ParaNorman posts a third straight weekend at £1m-plus. Titles this year that failed to achieve such a feat include The Bourne Legacy, Battleship and Dark Shadows. With £4.3m so far, ParaNorman is more or less matching the success of Universal/Laika predecessor Coraline, which stood at £4.97m after three weekends, but benefited from more than £1m in previews.
Landing in third place with £792,000, Resident Evil: Retributionrepresents a significant setback for the franchise, which had seen debut grosses steadily rise. Second film Apocalypse began its run with £801,000 in 2004, increasing to £932,000 in 2007 for the opening weekend of Extinction, and then an impressive £1.69m just over two years ago for the start of fourth film Afterlife – the first to be presented in 3D. The original Resident Evil debuted in 2002 with £802,000, meaning that newly arrived Retribution has proved to be the weakest opener of any in the series. It's fair to conclude that the cachet of 3D has significantly diminished for this kind of fare during the past two years.
In fourth place, Will Ferrell/Zach Galifianakis comedy The Campaign, with £771,000, isn't a terrible result for a film with a US-politics theme. Top comedy openers for the year so far are Ted (£9.33m), America Pie: Reunion (£6.33m) and The Dictator (£4.96m). (All those figures include preview takings.)
The arthouse battle
Landing in third place with £792,000, Resident Evil: Retributionrepresents a significant setback for the franchise, which had seen debut grosses steadily rise. Second film Apocalypse began its run with £801,000 in 2004, increasing to £932,000 in 2007 for the opening weekend of Extinction, and then an impressive £1.69m just over two years ago for the start of fourth film Afterlife – the first to be presented in 3D. The original Resident Evil debuted in 2002 with £802,000, meaning that newly arrived Retribution has proved to be the weakest opener of any in the series. It's fair to conclude that the cachet of 3D has significantly diminished for this kind of fare during the past two years.
In fourth place, Will Ferrell/Zach Galifianakis comedy The Campaign, with £771,000, isn't a terrible result for a film with a US-politics theme. Top comedy openers for the year so far are Ted (£9.33m), America Pie: Reunion (£6.33m) and The Dictator (£4.96m). (All those figures include preview takings.)
The arthouse battle
While crossover titles including Killing Them Softly, Hope Springs, Anna Karenina and Lawless continue to snag upscale viewers, middlebrow French-language crowd-pleaser Untouchable expands significantly to 154 screens, just sneaking into the top 10 with £493,000. For a genuine arthouse release, you have to go all the way down to 21st place to findHoly Motors, debuting on £66,000 from 23 screens, including £17,000 in previews. The film could not have asked for more glowing reviews, but less-adventurous audiences may have decided that "a gorgeous furry teacup of a film, preposterous and filled with secrets," as the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw had it, was not for them. The result is significantly up on director Leos Carax's last film, Pola X, which debuted with £5,900 from three screens, on its way to a lifetime tally of £29,200.
Also released at the weekend, but with considerably less fanfare, wasBarbara, from German helmer Christian Petzold. With £25,300 from 12 screens, including a sweet £8,851 at London's Renoir cinema, the film is already more than halfway to the lifetime total of Petzold's previous UK theatrical release, 2007's Yella (£44,000).
Playing exclusively in Cineworld sites, Polish-language film You Are God, recounting the true tale of late-90s hip-hop band Paktofonika, did better than both Holy Motors and Barbara, with £73,000 from 25 cinemas, and a 10-day total of £215,000. Previous films primarily targeting the UK's Polish population have seen massive plunges from the opening weekend, whereas You Are God dipped just 25%, on a modestly expanded screen count. Either the film is now reaching beyond the core Polish market – a stated aim for local distributor Project London – or audience patterns in this market sector are evolving.
The future
Following five successive weekends when the market was down compared with a year ago, the addition of Looper has helped the current frame post a 39% improvement on the 2011 equivalent, when Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy held on at the chart summit for a third week, and Taylor Lautner vehicle Abduction was the top new release. Cinema bookers will be looking for a further boost this weekend, with the arrival of Liam Neeson in Taken 2, Ethan Hawke horror flick Sinister, and well-regarded teen title The Perks of Being a Wallflower, based on Stephen Chbosky's bestseller. Also thrown into the mix are girl-group remake Sparkle, featuring Whitney Houston's final performance, and comedy The Knot, the third feature this year featuring and co-written by prolific multi-hyphenate Noel Clarke. Arthouses will welcome Liberal Arts, starring Josh Radnor and Elizabeth Olsen, while English Vinglish is the latest aimed at the nation's reliably robust Bollywood audience.
Top 10 films
1. Looper, £2,427,994 from 449 sites (New)
2. ParaNorman, £1,080,197 from 495 sites. Total: £4,304,900
3. Resident Evil: Retribution, £792,265 from 349 sites (New)
4. The Campaign, £772,102 from 390 sites (New)
5. House at the End of Street, £545,961 from 369 sites. Total: £1,864,304
6. Killing them Softly, £470,712 from 372 sites. Total: £2,069,984
7. Hope Springs, £423,051 from 381 sites. Total: £3,041,790
8. The Sweeney, £410,578 from 342 sites. Total: £3,876,142
9. Brave, £400,511 from 466 sites. Total: £21,219,445
10. Untouchable, £317,979 from 153 sites. Total: £493,309
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