Top 5 Breakdown
- Sausage Party – £2,672,073 – NE
After opening better than expected in the US last month with surprisingly positive reviews was likely to perform better than previous Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg films This is The End opened with £1.3m in June 2013, The Interview £281,916 in February 2015 and The Night Before £272,000.
Boosted by £370,000 from previews Bank Holiday Monday which helped build word of mouth ahead of the weekend and was also helped by the grey and rainy weekend weather.
After experiencing the secret world of pets during the summer in The Secret Life of Pets and secret world of Toys in the Toy Story trilogy cinema-goers always wanted to know what your hotdog is thinking before being eaten.
But as seen in the Sony Hacking emails Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg films are hated by Sony Pictures UK managing director Peter Taylor and British audiences don’t find them nearly as funny as the cast thinks they are.
Opening was 92% bigger than This Is The End £1.39m, 89% bigger than Pineapple Express, and 80% of Superbad £1.48m and 42% of 2011’s The Green Hornet £1.87m and 59% more than 2016’s Bad Neighbours 2.
There aren’t really any more recent comparisons to Sausage Party apart from adult animation of Team America: World Police which opened with £1,526,329 in January 2005 and South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut opening August 1999 with £1,496,581. But as they are 17 and 11 years old impossible to compare their box office as are really more than double in today’s price. Most recent gross-out comedy this year was Grimsby opening with £1.92m but hard to compare the two as Sacha Baron Cohen is far more popular with British audiences than Seth Rogen. Incredible Sausage Party opened bigger than Alice Through the looking Glass something no one could of possibly predicted 6 months ago.
The Sausage Party will likely drop including previews about 55% in its second weekend which will likely see the well-reviewed horror Don’t Breathe this weekend take over from top spot.
Sony Pictures had a very strong autumn last year despite The Walk failure with £19.72m Hotel Transylvania 2, Spectre £95.17m (it’s no wonder they are rumoured to be offering Daniel Craig $150m to star in several more James Bond films) and The Lady and the Van £13.21m.
This year Don’t Breathe, The Magnificent Seven, Inferno (opening two weeks ahead of US to avoid opening against Doctor Strange), Keep Watching and Passengers starring Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence (after screening footage at CinemaCon in April and CineEurope in June audiences will finally get to see the first trailer with The Magnificent Seven in two weeks time) opening only days after Rogue One which will probably take half the 9 films last year with Spectre taking 73% of £130.47m.
- Brotherhood – £1,975,534 – NE
Third part of Noel Clarke London gangster trilogy Kidulthood opened March 2006 with £100,056 from 41 screens going on to take £444,925; Adulthood opened June 2008 with £1.2m from 157 screens going on to take £3.24m;
Brotherhood opened Monday August 29th taking £970,777 Mon-Thurs and £1,004,079 Fri-Sun opening in less than half of the screens of Sausage Party. Previous films were front-loaded with the 7-day opening weekend Brotherhood will likely drop 60%+ in its second weekend which should still overtake box office of Adulthood 8 years ago.
It was reported screenings of Brotherhood at Vue Stratford were cancelled due to fights in the aisles and the cinema is no longer showing the film after two separate customer complaints.
- Finding Dory – £1,483,649 – total £38,853,837
2D took £1,473,078 (99.2%) – total £34,418,612 (88.5%)– 3D took £10,571 (0.7%) total £4,435,225 (11.4%)
Dropping only 1.4% in its sixth weekend overtaking the total box office for the original Finding Nemo of £37.5m and Monsters Inc £37.9m (as they were released 13 and 15 years ago neither can be compared with their historical box office would be over £70m today).
On Monday overtaken last year’s total box office of Inside Out becoming the third biggest Pixar film in the UK behind Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3 with Toy Story 4 in released in 2018 but will face tough competition from The Secret Life of Pets 2 opening three weeks earlier.
and should break though the £40m barrier this weekend the second film to do so this year after The Jungle Book and the first animated film since last summer’s Minions.
Finding Dory £8.12m opening weekend was modest compared with The Secret Life of Pets but held far stronger taking to date 5.3x far better than either The Secret Life of Pets 3.6x and The Jungle Book 4.6x but the same as last summer’s Inside Out.
The strong legs Finding Dory was as much due to strong word of mouth as opening at the start of the school holidays which meant box office was split over the 6 week holidays cinemagoers didn’t feel they had to go out and see Finding Dory in its opening weekend as was going to play throughout the summer.
While the other big films of the year Deadpool was 2.7x, Captain America: Civil War 2.5x, Batman Vs Superman 2.4x and Suicide Squad 2.9x.
While Finding Dory opening was only 20.9% (currently) of its opening compared with 18.8% of Inside Out and 27.6% of The Secret Life of Pets and 21.3% for The Jungle Book.
With Finding Dory still holding strongly it could affect the opening of Kubo and the Two Strings this weekend.
- Bad Moms – £1,152,534 – £3,960,462
After its slightly disappointing opening weekend dropped only 19.3% in its second weekend thanks to strong word of mouth adding £1.3m Mon-Thurs.
While Bad Moms was a sleeper success in the US how it performs against Bridget Jones’s Baby in two weeks’ time will see if it has legs which is unlikely.
Holding better than How to Be Single which opened 23.7% better in February but dropped 49.1% in its second weekend to £952,290 and £3,664,937 already overtaking the final box office My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 £3.81m and even with the imminent arrival of Bridget Jones’s Baby should overtake How to Be Single’s £5.87m.
Judd Apatow films often underperform in the UK Has overtaken 2015’s Trainwreck £2.82m, 2013’s This is 40 and will overtake 2012’s The Five-Year Engagement by next weekend.
- Suicide Squad – £780,480 – £32,456,788
2D – £713,426 (91.4%) –total £25,200,353 (76.6%) 3D – £3,841 (0.4%) – total £4,782,497 (14.7%) – IMAX /3D – £63,313 (8.1%) – total £2,473,937 (7.6%)
Down 39.2% in its fifth weekend after all the doom and gloom after the negative reviews Suicide Squad has held far stronger over the weeks after opening than most expected after opening 23% less than Batman Vs Superman (£11.21 Vs £14.62m).
If Suicide Squad goes on to take £34m opening will be 32.8% of final far better than all of the comic-book movies this year. Captain America: Civil War 39.2% opening weekend and final; 40.4% of Batman Vs Superman opening and final; 40.5% X-Men Apocalypse opening and final; 36.5% Deadpool opening and final. But Suicide Squad did benefit from its release up to now all being school holidays but with a 15 certificate others bar Deadpool had a wider audience and wider fan-base as Suicide Squad is much less well known to mainstream cinema-goers than Avengers 2.1 and Batman Vs Superman.
Away from pick-ups The Infiltrator, The Girl with All the Gifts and Blood Father Warner Bros have a strong slate of films for the rest of the year animation Storks for half term holidays having Trolls its biggest competition. Action thriller The Accountant starring Ben Affleck and Anna Kendrick looks interesting from the trailers (Warner Bros also release Ben Affleck’s directing follow-up gangster drama Live By Night after his Oscar winning Argo set for January release which is seen to be an Oscar contender. The first part of Harry Potter prequel trilogy Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them opening five years after what we thought was the last Harry Potter film Deathly Hallows Part 2, if rumours are true the trilogy will be followed by Harry Potter and the Cursed Child which will likely be another two part series in 2022 and 2024.
In December Tom Hanks stars as Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger in Clint Eastwood’s Sully the story of a regular man becoming an American hero is unlikely to generate much interest in the UK unless it gets Oscar/BAFTA interest reviews have been positive and Tom Hanks performance has been praised but there are many more films that will likely be ahead of it when nominations are announced especially after Tom Hanks himself said of LaLa Land at Telluride film festival “This is not a movie that falls into some sort of trend. I think it is going to be a test of the broader national audience, because it has none of the things that major studios want. Pre-Awareness is a big thing they want, which is why a lot of remakes are going on. (La La) is not a sequel, nobody knows who the characters are…But if the audience doesn’t go and embrace something as wonderful as this then we are all doomed.”
Ending the year Will Smith stars in Collateral Beauty alongside Kate Winslet, Keira Knightley, Helen Mirren, Edward Norton, Michael Peña, and Naomie Harris directed by David Frankel (The Devil Wears Prada, Marley & Me). The plot sounds similar to Will Smith’s 2006 film The Pursuit of Happyness.
Warner Bros have strong slate for 2017 including The Lego Batman Movie which will likely be the DC movie audiences have been wanting to see. Kong: Skull Island prequel to King Kong was surprisingly let go by Universal Pictures as was originally to be a jointly made film. Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword delayed from summer 2016 never a good sign but apart from Revolver and Swept Away Guy Ritchie films are always very watchable last years The Man From U.N.C.L.E. was one of my favourite films of last year. Summer is much riskier compared to rivals with Wonder Woman, Dunkirk, CHiPs and It with the long delayed Geostorm opening October and Justice League in November which everyone is hoping will be better than Batman Vs Superman and Suicide Squad will face tough competition in the UK with Paddington 2 opening the weekend before.
Also released
Morgan – 20th Century Fox – £193,508 from 397 screens. A very disappointing opening while was expected in the US opening the weekend after Don’t Breathe opened strongly the sci-fi horror mix along with the media coverage generated by IBM Watson AI creating its own trailer of the film after IBM researchers taught Watson about movie trailers showing him over 100 horror trailers to allow Watson to perform analysis to understand what makes up a trailer and what audiences find scary. Watson found six minutes of footage and then a human editor created this trailer. (second trailer is the one 20th Century Fox created without any AI help).
Equity – Sony Pictures – £12,923 from 103 screens
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Café Society – Warner Bros
After Woody Allen’s last two films Magic in the Moonlight opened with £270,000 in 2014 and Irrational Man with £197,188 in 2015 and 2013’s Blue Jasmine with £833,798. Cafe Society opening was closer to 2011’s Midnight in Paris opening with £495,709.
Other box office news:
This weekend’s top 10 box office took £10,941,125 Up 22.4% from last weekend £8,935,822;
Weekend was up 102.9% from same weekend last year (£5,392,011) when No Escape £636,924, Me and Earl £394,192, Transported Refuelled £350,438 and American Ultra £346,769, Ricki and the Flash £220,000 and Dope £40,000 opened.
Next weekend 2015: Legend £5,189,074, The Maze Runner: Scorch Trials £2,799,428, The Visit £1,031,292, Irrational Man £197,188 opened.
Top 10 Films Summer 2016 UK
Disappointments of summer 2016 while X-Men: Apocalypse, Star Trek Beyond and Independence Day: Resurgence were in the top 10 biggest films all three will been seen as disappointments after previous films successes.
Bigger failures were Ice Age: Collusion Course £6.76m, Ghostbusters £10.39m, Pete’s Dragon £4.2m, Life on the Road £3.43m and Alice Through the Looking Glass £9.66m all should have taken more than double their final box office.
Me Before You £9.56m The Conjuring 2 £10.71m, Legend of Tarzan £9.07m and Central Intelligence £8.32m all did better than expected.
Total UK box-office for the 18-week starting the Captain America: Civil War 29th April is £456.0m, versus £436.0m for 2015, a rise of 4.6% but most of that is ticket inflation.
Summer 2016 was always going to be the troubling summer between year the massive titles of 2015 including Avenger: Age of Ultron, Minions, Jurassic World, Inside Out, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, Pitch Perfect 2 and Mad Max: Fury Road. While there were similar films Captain America: Civil War was more Avengers 2.1, similarly The Secret Life of Pets – Minions, Finding Dory- Inside Out- Jason Bourne- Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation what was missing was the massive mega-movie of similar size to Jurassic World.
While many complained about the reboots, sequels and comic-book movies of 2016 next summer is no different; Furious 8, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Pirates of the Caribbean 5, Baywatch, Annabelle 2, Wonder Woman, Barbie, The Mummy, World War Z 2, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, Transformers 5, Despicable Me 3, War of the Planet of the Apes, Cars 3, Spider-Man Homecoming, War of the Planet of the Apes, Alien: Covenant, Jumanji, The Emoji Movie, CHiPs and Flatliners.
So any lessons learnt about summer 2016 will quickly be forgotten next summer as the crazy roller coaster begins again with even bigger budgets and risks than this year and the memo Jeffrey Katzenberg famously wrote 25 years ago showed the concerns that studios had then but now they are ten-folded.
Complete UK Box office top 10 – September 2nd – 4th 28th 2016
US Box Office
- Screen Gems – Don’t Breathe– dropped 40.6% – $15.7m – $51.1m; holding far better than expected due to positive word of mouth causing Morgan to be DOA;
- Warner Bros – Suicide Squad – dropped 18.3% – $10.1m – $297.4m; despite all the negativity surrounding it still manages to hold second place due to crowded marketplace which has cannibalized many films performance last week 16 films taking $1m+ at box office this weekend 21.
- Disney – Pete’s Dragon – dropped 13% – $6.4m – $64.2m
- Focus Features – Kubo and the Two Strings – dropped 17.6% – $6.4m – $34.3m; despite receiving rave reviews is under-performing compared with previous films 2014’s The Boxtrolls had taken $41m, 2012’s ParaNorman $40.3m and 2009’s Coraline $53.7m.
- Sony Pictures – Sausage Party – dropped 29.6% – $5.3m – $88.4m; over the coming weeks should overtake Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg 2013’s This is the End $101.4m and 2011’s The Green Hornet $98.7m.
- Disney – The Light Between Oceans – opens $4.9m; after premiering at Venice Film Festival receiving mixed reviews had a lower than expecting opening away from X-Men movies Michael Fassbender his films have been critical but not box office successes while Alicia Vikander recently starred in Jason Bourne but The Danish Girl, Burnt, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and Ex Machina underwhelmed in the US.
- STX – Bad Moms – dropped 15% – $4.7m – $102.5m; the Bad Moms have overtaken 2011’s Bad Teacher $100.2m and will shortly overtake last year’s Trainwreck and Spy.
- Warner Bros – War Dogs – dropped 33% – $4.7m – $35.2m
- Lionsgate – Hell or High Water – up 26.7% adding 394 screens – $4.5m – $14.6m; with most films under-performing in the top 10 and its second weekend of adding 400 screens should have given it a far stronger boost as last year Sicario entered the top 10 in its second weekend in only 59 screens.
- Lionsgate – Mechanic: Resurrection – dropped 42.7% – $4.2m – $14.4m
Also opened
20th Century Fox – Morgan opened $1.9m
Studios expanded several summer releases including:
Disney – Finding Dory – added 1,730 screens up 204.8% – $1.9m – $481.8m
Sony – Ghostbusters – added 657 screens – up 94.2% – $1.01m – $126.2m
20th Century Fox – Ice Age: Collusion Course – added 24 screens – up 42% – $725,000 – $62.6m
Lionsgate – Nerve – up 34.4% – added 306 screens – $685,000 – $37.6m; boosted by a promotion by Atom Tickets with tickets $5 if cinemagoers downloaded the app.
20th Century Fox – Independence Day: Resurgence – 279 screens – up 139.3% – $155,000 – $103.1m
