The winner
Animation is the one film genre that regularly supplies big hits without the benefit of character familiarity, with successes from studios such as Fox/Blue Sky (Ice Age), Universal/Illumination (Despicable Me) and Pixar (everything bar the sequels). Even recent Disney successes such as Tangled and Frozen barely traded on audience affection for their fairytale origins. However, the explosive opening numbers for The Lego Movie suggest brand familiarity can be an asset in animation, just as it invariably is in live action.
Opening with £8.05m including £2.16m in previews, The Lego Movie has achieved the strongest start for a non-sequel animation since The Simpsons Movie in July 2007 – although excluding preview figures, it was beaten by the opening weekend of 2009's Up, with £6.41m.
The success is a big boost to backers Warners, which has the weakest record in animation of the major studios. Pulling in writer-directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller – whose previous features, both animated (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs) and live action (21 Jump Street), were for Sony – proved to be a smart move. The Lego Movie 2 has already been announced, and Warners is doubtlessly casting around for other properties from which to create animated hits.
The February half-term holiday means that weekdays more or less play like weekend days. We can expect big numbers every day this week for The Lego Movie, and a strong hold this weekend as families catch up before kids return to school. Numbers should drop thereafter, but word of mouth could see a sustained play period for The Lego Movie. Disney's Frozen, with £37.5m, has achieved nearly eight times its opening weekend – a multiple that is presumably beyond the wildest dreams of Warners for The Lego Movie.
Lego had a predictable impact on the other animations in the market, with Mr Peabody & Sherman dropping 45% and Frozen 47%. New arrival Tinker Bell and the Pirate Fairy landed at number six with a creditable £967,000.
The runner-up
Fox may at one time have been rubbing its hands with glee at the prospect of The Monuments Men, which could be pitched as Ocean's Eleven in the second world war, and promised to be both a starry men-on-a-mission movie and the most commercially appealing effort yet from George Clooney as director. Excitement presumably dimmed when the film was delivered to the studio, and the previewing strategy to press certainly qualifies as cautious.
Fox pressed on, boldly selling the concept and the strong cast elements, and achieved a respectable opening of £1.62m. That's not in the Ocean's Eleven league – Steven Soderbergh's film opened here in 2002 with £5.10m – but is better than anything Clooney had previously managed as director. His previous best is 2011's The Ides of March, with a £665,000 debut from 213 screens. Despite a positioning strategy that played down the American football subject matter, 2008's Leatherheads was a challenge for the UK, and it began with £475,000 from 335 cinemas.
The Valentine's Day smackdown
With Valentine's Day falling on a Friday this year, the date proved attractive to both Universal and StudioCanal for romantic drama Endless Love and salsa-themed comedy Cuban Fury. The latter also presented a test for the commercial appeal of Nick Frost as a leading man, carrying a film for the first time without the considerable benefit of Simon Pegg at his side. Insurance came in the form of Chris O'Dowd, as Frost's rival for the affections of Rashida Jones, and a strong support cast. Endless Love showcased the first leading role for Alex Pettyfer since the career-rescuing Magic Mike in 2012. (He also has a small part in The Butler.)
The result: Cuban Fury opened with a decent £966,000 from 361 cinemas, yielding an average of £2,677. Given the Valentine's Day boost, an average of £3,000 would have been desirable, but backers will be content. Endless Love was a bit softer, landing one place lower in the chart with £745,000 from 359 cinemas. Half-term could see younger teens catching up this week, as the 12A certificate is no bar to admission for this vital audience.
Comparisons for Endless Love might be any film adapted from a book by Nicholas Sparks, which occupy a similar space even though this particular film is from a 1979 Scott Spencer novel, and was previously made into a 1981 picture by Franco Zeffirelli. Sparks' The Lucky One, starring Zac Efron, opened in May 2012, with a fairly comparable £830,000 (plus £329,000 in previews).
Showing in a one-off screening the day before Valentine's Day, 50 Kisses achieved a robust £9,435 at east London's Genesis cinema. Billed as the world's first crowd-sourced feature film, it emerged from a challenge presented at the 2012 London Screenwriters' festival. The guideline for submissions was that they should be set on Valentine's Day and feature at least one kiss.
The awards battle
The last date a film could release and still be eligible for this year's Baftas was 14 February, and it's fair to say the commercially strongest titles had already jostled for the better slots in January, with a longer play period during the heat of the awards season. Last of the big awards titles to arrive is Her, which opened with a so-so £449,000 from 200 screens. One of the big indie bookers revealed on the Bafta red carpet that the film was doing well in their sites, so it's fair to assume there are some weak numbers in the regional multiplexes.
Joaquin Phoenix is appealing in the context of the film, but perhaps less so in the key marketing image, which must stand alone as a piece of visual communication. Phoenix is in any case unproved commercially as a leading man. The Master, in which he shared top billing with Philip Seymour Hoffman, earned £372,000 from 153 screens in its first weekend of wide release, after a two-week single-screen platform in Leicester Square, London. Walk the Line was a hit, but less reliant on its star's box-office brawn.
Among existing titles, The Wolf of Wall Street fell 30% from the previous weekend, Dallas Buyers Club 31% and 12 Years a Slave 40%. The latter title should receive a boost this week from its best picture and actor Bafta wins. With £19.6m, Wolf will soon join the £20m club, and looks set to overtake Hannibal (£21.6m) as the biggest ever 18-certificate UK hit. In the US, Dallas Buyers Club stands at $24.3m after 16 weeks. By rule of thumb, the UK equivalent result would be £2.4m. Dallas has already achieved that, after only 10 days on release, so the it is clearly going to, in industry parlance, over-index for this territory.
The Book Thief achieved a decent £17,000 from a single London venue – a release that qualified the film for Bafta consideration. The official release date is Wednesday 26 February, and reviews will run that week.
The future
After a three-week run where takings fell behind 2013 levels, overall the market is a welcome 20% up on the equivalent weekend last year, when A Good Day to Die Hard knocked Wreck-It Ralph off the top spot. Last weekend the market was flooded with releases for Valentine's Day and the school holiday, and it is now pausing for breath. Colin Farrell and Russell Crowe star in magic-themed romantic drama A New York Winter's Tale, while arthouse fans have a riot of choices, including Tom Hiddleston in Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive. Oddly, two 18-certificate films including penetrative sex go head to head: French gay drama Stranger by the Lake and Lars von Trier's much-anticipated Nymphomaniac Parts 1 and 2. The Von Trier double bill is receiving a special nationwide release on Saturday only, with live talent Q+A. Thereafter, opportunities to see it on the big screen may be limited.
Top 10 films
1. The Lego Movie, £8,051,140 from 547 sites (New)
2. The Monuments Men, £1,616,625 from 489 sites (New)
3. RoboCop, £1,509,810 from 436 sites. Total: £4,920,305
4. Mr Peabody & Sherman, £1,404,118 from 522 sites. Total: £5,807,849
5. The Wolf of Wall Street, £1,130,707 from 426 sites. Total: £19,602,680
6. Tinker Bell and the Pirate Fairy, £966,920 from 405 sites (New)
7. Cuban Fury, £966,276 from 361 sites (New)
8. Endless Love, £744,867 from 359 sites (New)
9. Dallas Buyers Club, £716,123 from 332 sites. Total: £2,426,133
10. 12 Years a Slave, £536,615 from 441 sites. Total: £16,504,154
Other openers
Her, £449,307 from 200 sites
Gunday, £206,741 from 59 sites
Jack Strong, £62,973 from 21 sites
Barbie in the Pearl Princess, £61,392 from 83 sites
Sleepless in Seattle, £19,462 from 75 sites (rerelease)
The Book Thief, £16,795 from 1 site
Idhu Kathirvelan Kadhal, £12,460 from 8 sites
Bastards, £11,574 from 10 sites
Love Is in the Air, £7,816 from 3 sites
1983, £7,715 from 21 sites
8 Minutes Idle, £2,412 from 4 sites
Thanks to Rentrak
• The Lego Movie – review
• The Monuments Men – review
