The winner: Rampage
Ejecting Peter Rabbit from the top of the UK box office after its impressive four-week run is Rampage, with £3.16m from 555 sites for the weekend period, and £4.11m including previews. That’s behind the recent debut of action-flavoured Ready Player One (£4.03m, or £5.11m with previews), but ahead of both Tomb Raider (£2.55m, and £3.08m with previews) and Pacific Rim: Uprising (£1.66m).
Although Rampage is based on a video game series, it’s fair to say that both Ready Player One and Tomb Raider benefited from bigger brand equity, and ditto Pacific Rim: Uprising, since it’s a sequel. With Rampage, Warners and its subsidiary New Line were selling the concept (giant mutated wild animals devastating cities) and star Dwayne Johnson.
The actor formerly known as the Rock is now increasingly acknowledged as the world’s biggest box-office draw. In the past year, not including Rampage, films starring Johnson (Fast & Furious 8, Baywatch, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle) have grossed £77.4m at UK cinemas, and $2.37bn worldwide. Hollywood is betting big on the actor, with a stream of new Johnson movies announced for the next couple of years or already in production. First to hit cinemas will be Skyscraper, arriving in mid-July.
The runner-up: Peter Rabbit
Another week, another big haul at the UK box office for Sony’s family hit Peter Rabbit. The final seven days of the Easter school holiday saw the Beatrix Potter adaptation add another £5.9m, pushing the tally after five weeks to £38.1m. Peter Rabbit and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (£38.2m) have delivered the biggest UK hits for Sony outside the James Bond franchise, and both have succeeded far ahead of industry expectations.
With kids now back at school, Peter Rabbit’s weekly box office should start to slide. The film still has a little way to go to match Paddington 2, which likewise mixes live action and character animation and is based on British children’s stories. Paddington 2, with £42.6m, was the sixth biggest release of 2017 at UK cinemas.
The strong hold: A Quiet Place
While The Greatest Showman delivered yet another heroic performance, declining just 8% from the previous session, A Quiet Place achieved an even stronger hold, down just 4%. Second-weekend takings of £1.91m push the tally after 11 days to £6.35m. Just over a year ago, breakout genre hit Get Out had reached £4.86m after two weekends of play, on its way to a robust £10.3m. Look for John Krasinski’s high-concept horror to exceed that total. In the US, A Quiet Place is already at $100m, and the worldwide tally so far is $152m. Production budget is reported at $17m.
A Quiet Place achieved its fine result despite fresh competition in the genre space from the Jason Blum-produced Truth or Dare, which debuted with a solid £931,000 from 442 cinemas.
The Polish hit: Pitbull: The Last Dog
The Polish action franchise has delivered another hit at UK cinemas with the release of Pitbull: Ostatni Pies (aka Pitbull: The Last Dog). However, unlike recent entries such as Pitbull: New Order and Pitbull: Tough Women, The Last Dog is not written or directed by franchise creator Patryk Vega. The Last Dog’s debut of £252,000 from 279 cinemas (and £276,000 including previews) compares unfavourably with the opening salvo for Vega’s own Women of Mafia back in early March (£552,000 and £571,000 including previews). Pitbull: Tough Women began in December 2016 with £456,000 from just 104 cinemas.
The market
If Rampage could be said to be delivering the appetiser to 2018’s summer blockbuster movie season, then it’s by no means as commercially substantial as the morsel tossed at cinemagoers exactly a year ago in mid-April 2017: Fast & Furious 8. For this reason, box office for the latest weekend is down a hefty 42% on the equivalent session from 2017.
Salvation for cinema bookers is not immediately at hand, since new releases for the coming weekend are led by 1940s-set romance The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, which should play nicely to its audience but doesn’t scream four-quadrant box-office juggernaut. Instead, multiplexes are pinning hopes on the surefire smash arriving on 26 April: Avengers: Infinity War.
Top 10 films 13-15 April
1. Rampage, £4,109,247 from 555 sites (new)
2. Peter Rabbit, £2,021,163 from 652 sites. Total: £38,093,407 (five weeks)
3. A Quiet Place, £1,907,585 from 578 sites. Total: £6,350,119 (two weeks)
4. Ready Player One, £1,183,259 from 579 sites. Total: £14,501,485 (three weeks)
5. Truth or Dare, £931,250 from 442 sites (new)
6. The Greatest Showman, £623,091 from 424 sites. Total: £44,928,180 (16 weeks)
7. Love, Simon, £623,042 from 499 sites. Total: £2,749,944 (two weeks)
8. Isle of Dogs, £502,487 from 473 sites. Total: £5,131,027 (three weeks)
9. Black Panther, £452,734 from 270 sites. Total: £49,457,708 (nine weeks)
10. Duck Duck Goose, £357,087 from 461 sites. Total: £3,229,768 (three weeks)
Other openers
Pitbull: Ostatni Pies, £276,451 (including £24,791 previews) from 279 sites
Luisa Miller – Met Opera, £231,297 from 207 sites
Custody, £46,916 from 37 sites
October, £37,887 from 50 sites
Golak Bugni Bank Te Batua, £12,851 from eight sites
Western, £11,417 from 12 sites
A Fistful of Dollars, £11,409 from nine sites (re-release)
Making the Grade, £8,364 from four sites (Ireland only)
The Titan, £7,873 from 11 sites
Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts, £5,218 from five sites
A Gentle Creature, £3,282 from six sites
Dwie Korony, £3,204 from two sites
Kirill Petrenko and Yuja Wang – Berliner Philharmoniker, £3,134 from 17 sites
Krishnarjuna Yudham, £1,196 from four sites
Alan Hinkes: The First Briton to Climb the World’s Highest Mountains, £446 from one site
Can Feda, £440 from one site
Thanks to comScore. All figures relate to takings in UK and Ireland cinemas.
