- The Super Mario Galaxy Movie £14,995,549 – NE
Included £5,532,323 from previews Wednesday/Thursday
Took £4.316m 27.54% Friday; £3.28m 21.87% Saturday; £2.03m 13.54% Sunday; took £2.72m Monday; £1.66m Tuesday.
39th biggest opening between A Minecraft Movie and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (close to Fantastic Beasts, Frozen 2, Despicable Me 2 and Batman Vs Superman) and 80th biggest inflated opening between Furious 8 and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (close to Independence Day, The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace and Alice In Wonderland)
3rd biggest opening over the last 52 weeks between A Minecraft Movie and Jurassic World Rebirth (close to Lilo & Stitch, Avatar: Fire And Ash, Mission Impossible 8 and How To Train Your Dragon).
All the records The Super Mario Galaxy Movie had in the UK, as in the US, were all expected months before opening, to have the biggest opening of 2026 (so far), the 2nd biggest animated film over the last five years and the 3rd biggest Universal Pictures animation opening.
Opened in 706 cinemas and 2,500+ screens (in many multiplexes, was playing in over 6 screens; at Vue Westfield and Stratford had 37 shows a day from Weds- Sun)
Had the 40th widest opening in the UK (706 cinemas), similar to The Batman and close to 28 Years Later, Deadpool and Wolverine, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and Jurassic World Dominion; 48th 700+ opening since 2017’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
5 day opening was 11.38% of its US opening, including previews and 8.36% over 3 days (£9,458,654)
| Day | Super Mario Bros | A Minecraft Movie | Super Mario Galaxy |
| Wednesday | £3.9m | n/a | £3.25m |
| Thursday | £3.02m | n/a | £2.26m |
| Friday | £3.81m | £4.65m | £4.13m |
| Saturday | £3.04m | £5.9m | £3.28m |
| Sunday | £1.8m | £4.46m | £2.03m |
| Monday (Bank Hol.) | £4.1m | £2.49m | £2.72m |
| Tuesday | £1.75m | £2.2m | £1.66m |
2023’s Super Mario Bros opened £15,691,810; including £6,943,163 from previews (£3.9m Weds and £3.02m on Thurs); £3.81m Fri; £3.04m Sat; £1.8m Sunday; its biggest day on Easter Monday £4.1m; taking £54,578,335/£55,198,543
2025’s A Minecraft Movie opened £15,013,136; £4.65m Fri; £5.9m Sat £4.46m Sun and £2.49m Monday: £2.2m Tues; taking £55,508,185.
As with Super Mario Bros, the sequel opens at the start of the Easter holidays and the weekend of Easter.
The Super Mario video game series has sold over 450m copies of the video games up to last year; including spin-offs like Mario Kart and Mario Part its over 950m copies generating over $50bn worldwide, this of course puts 2023’s Super Mario Bros global BO into perspective while $1.36bn is huge for cinema it’s not in the video games world as Mario related YouTube videos exceeded 100bn views as of April 2023.
The only real surprise is why the Nintendo Extended Universe hasn’t happened yet, as they have been talking about it for many years, but the problem is, as with Marvel, Nintendo sold off rights to many of their most popular games to studios already. This was similar to when Marvel sold rights to many of their properties to studios and had to wait until their rights ended before they could make their films.
Films based on video games have had mixed success at the box office, but they should be hugely popular given that they have a huge established fanbase. Filmmakers often struggle to expand the story from game to screen. The difference between recent video game adaptations compared to films made a decade ago is that they are more family-friendly, playing to a younger audience, unlike 2010’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, 2005’s Doom, 2016’s Assassin’s Creed, 1995’s Street Fighter and 1995’s Mortal Kombat.
Last year, there was a viral TikTok trend that saw Minecraft fans throw popcorn, shout out, swear and cheer when a character says, “Chicken jockey” and is filmed on their phones before posting it on TikTok. In one cinema in the US, the police were called. A similar thing happened three years ago with Minions: Rise of Gru, with fans dressed as Gentleminions and carrying bananas. Will there be one this year for either Super Mario Galaxy Movie or Minions & Monsters?
Despite industry hyperbole with The Super Mario Galaxy Movie opening, it was always going to open with around £15m as that was what Super Mario Brothers and A Minecraft film opened to, and Mario 2 was always going to attract the same audience, but unlikely to play to a wider audience. It was also likely to be more front-loaded than the original film; it took 40% of its UK opening weekend from previews.
This is the problem with these films: they are built on hype and FOMO, and with a film like Mario, it’s fan-led, which gives the film a massive opening. Industry reaction is predictable despite its opening being very predictable since the last film. Only need to see the 34% drop from 2023’s Super Mario Bros on Easter Monday, Mario 2 will drop 60%+ this weekend and take under £50m when it should be taking £60m+.
This has happened many times with “eagerly awaited” sequels like last year’s Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy, having a huge £12,298,966 opening, and it was expected to have long legs and run past £50m, instead it stumbled past £46m. It was similarly the case with Wicked: For Good, opening with a massive £18,858,825, taking only 2.5x the opening £47m instead of the £60m Wicked took a year earlier. Hype and FOMO give these films huge openings, but audiences are very fickle and quickly move on to the next shiny new film, especially when it’s targeting under-25s.
While films like The Housemaid and The Magic Faraway Tree aren’t built on hype but strong word of mouth, they have long legs. The problem is the industry will focus its attention on the “huge” opening of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and the expected hold of Project Hail Mary, but The Housemaid and The Magic Faraway Tree won’t receive the same coverage, despite these films that are growing audiences; they are the ones that will keep cinemas open. The tentpoles will always be there. But without the Faraway Trees, the audience shrinks.
- 2. Project Hail Mary £3,434,299 – £21,871,342
Down 28.1% in its third weekend
£1.27m 36.98% (+5.8% £1.23) Fri; £1.22m 35.53% (-35.45% £1.89m) Sat; £929k 27% (-44.7% £1.68m Sun; took £991k Monday; £552k Tuesday
88th biggest third between Shrek 2 and Die Another Day (close to The Housemaid, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Jurassic Park and Independence Day) and 178th biggest inflated third weekend between The Simpsons and Hook (close to The Lego Movie, The Mask, Armageddon and Goldeneye).
The success of films like Project Hail Mary lies in their “four-quadrant” appeal, playing to all major demographics and making people want to return to the cinema, many of whom haven’t visited in months. Success breeds success, as the other films playing alongside it—The Drama, The Magic Faraway Tree—attract different demographics, with many audiences crossing over between them.
What was surprising was that despite losing most IMAX/PLF and other premium screens, it only dropped 28% in its third weekend. Being a “big screen film” that can no longer be seen on the biggest screens might have hurt it, but it has now broken through to a wider demographic who aren’t focused on spectacle. They just want to enjoy the film and see what everyone else has been raving about for weeks.
Normally, when a tentpole opens, it cannibalises the marketplace. While The Super Mario Galaxy Movie took 61% of the weekend’s box office, there was still plenty of bandwidth for Project Hail Mary, The Drama, and The Magic Faraway Tree all to perform strongly. This is the “Chinese New Year complex” in February, Chinese distributors release half a dozen films ahead of their New Year, and they all perform strongly, with the box office often exceeding $1.2bn.
This is what I suggested six years ago after COVID: that studios should pick films that complement each other and release them close together to rebuild the cinemagoing habit. Tim Richards might have thought in March 2020, “Families, couples, individuals are being tied up at home for weeks or months now. When it is over, there will be a demand to get out as we have never seen in history.” And again, in September 2021, he said the world was “about to embark on the second Golden Age of cinema.”
There was never any evidence of this happening with one film, Tenet in August 2020, and No Time To Die in 2021. Most films need other films to bounce off. The only exceptions are comic-book movies, which tend to cannibalise everything around them. That said, it will be interesting to see what happens on December 19th when Dune Part 3 and Avengers: Doomsday open.
Everyone expected Warner Bros to move Dune Part 3 as soon as Disney moved Doomsday to December, but they have IMAX screens locked for three weeks. They weren’t moving. This week, they announced 70mm IMAX screenings in December across 10 cinemas worldwide. Similar to The Odyssey, when advance bookings for 70mm IMAX opened last July, many shows sold out within hours.
Project Hail Mary has generated immense media coverage over the last few weeks, but occasionally, real-life events have an effect on a film. Ahead of the UK release of Independence Day, NASA discovered potential evidence of ancient alien life on Mars. Ahead of The Martian, NASA confirmed evidence of liquid water flowing on present-day Mars. And during the release of Project Hail Mary, NASA launched Artemis II, with four astronauts on a flyby around the Moon—the first crewed lunar mission in over 50 years.
That coincidence has turned Project Hail Mary into something more than a film. It has become part of the global conversation, discussed on media channels that would never normally talk about a movie. To quote the Castrol GTX tagline: “It’s reaching parts other oils cannot reach.”
The Artemis II crew watched the film in quarantine before their launch. During their lunar flyby, a NASA controller radioed them with the film’s catchphrase: “Amaze, amaze, amaze.” The moment went viral. The film is now forever linked to a historic achievement in human space exploration. It has become a symbol of what humanity can do when it works together—a stark contrast to the headlines of division, conflict, and political chaos.
Artemis is also the title of another Andy Weir novel. A film adaptation has been in development since 2017 at 20th Century Fox, with Phil Lord and Christopher Miller attached to direct originally, before they were fired from Solo: A Star Wars Story in 2018. After the huge success of Project Hail Mary, 20th Century Studios will certainly try to revive Artemis, with Lord and Miller still attached.
Ryan Gosling previously starred in 2018’s First Man, a biopic of Neil Armstrong. The film was released six months before the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. Had its release been closer to the anniversary, it could have been a much bigger box office hit. Instead, it opened six months early and, despite positive reviews, struggled to find an audience more interested in Venom. Timing is everything.
Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey depicted astronauts walking on the moon about a year before it actually happened. Art has always anticipated science. But rarely has science amplified art so perfectly as with Project Hail Mary and Artemis II.
Much has been written about how Project Hail Mary has held in its third weekend. While it has held very well, it’s not the first film to do so. Its strong hold isn’t a surprise: it had weeks of buzz before opening, positive reviews, strong word of mouth, and its third weekend was similar to The Housemaid’s three months ago. But The Housemaid didn’t receive as much praise. It did what Project Hail Mary did, but without the safety net, without the $200m budget, without the premium formats, without the Super Bowl ad. It just… worked.
While Project Hail Mary has been heralded as an “original film success,” it would never have been made if The Martian hadn’t been a huge success in 2015, taking £23.6m in the UK, $631m worldwide, and winning awards. Project Hail Mary is a brand, like Dunkirk, Oppenheimer, and The Odyssey, which are brands of Christopher Nolan. They aren’t truly original films. A film like The Housemaid was—it had no existing audience already in place. There have been many hugely successful novels that haven’t had successful film adaptations.
But Project Hail Mary has become something rare: a film that transcends its genre and its marketing. It has become part of the story of human exploration. And that, more than any box office number, is its true legacy.
Project Hail Mary is reaching parts of the cultural conversation that other films cannot reach. It’s being discussed on science channels, news programmes, and social media feeds that would never normally talk about a Hollywood blockbuster. It has become part of the story of human exploration. It has become a symbol of what humanity can achieve when it works together, at a time when the headlines are dominated by division, conflict, and chaos.
This is not something that can be manufactured. It’s not something that marketing can buy. It’s a rare and precious alchemy of art, timing, and collective need.
Ryan Gosling’s last film, 2024’s The Fall Guy, dropped 7.6% £876,184 and £8,246,320, 68% of £12,126,013; next year, he returns to space in Star Wars: Starfighter. Ryan Gosling’s previous sci-fi films include 2018’s First Man, which dropped 54.3% £605,032 and £6,559,818, 89.1% of £5,115,235, 69.5% of £7,360,906, and 2017’s Blade Runner 2049 dropped 42% £1,791,027 #1 617 screens £15,718,087 of £18,918,361; 3.1x opening.
Third weekends
2024’s Dune Part 2 dropped 30.8% £4,046,492 and £26,207,623 of £39,466,555
Friday £1.050m 25.95%; Saturday £1.67m 41.28%; Sunday £1.326m 32.77%
2021’s Dune dropped 53% £1,548,306 #3 664 screens and £16,810,576 of £21,947,056
2010’s Inception dropped 22% £3,229,651 #4 459 screens and £20,800,468 of £34,976,999 (£46,851,543 inflated); took 5.92x opening
2013’s Gravity dropped 50% £2,389,193 #2 548 screens and £19,444,886 of £32,756,514; 5.24x opening
2014’s Interstellar dropped 49% £1,895,368 and £15,866,812 of £21,173,601; 3.73x opening
2015’s The Martian dropped 37% £2,419,958 #4 and £17,491,033 of £23,589,854; 3.61x opening
2016’s Arrival dropped 47% £778,449 #5 487 screens and £7,334,028 of £9,144,719; 3.13x opening
2017’s Blade Runner 2049 dropped
2023’s Oppenheimer dropped 33% £5,493,481 #2 738 screens and £39,176,945 of £58.9m; took 5.37x opening
2007’s I Am Legend dropped 45% £2,051,372 and £21,955,870 of £25,348,532 (£39,754,529 inflated); 2.3x opening
2005’s War of the Worlds dropped 47% £2,223,949 and £21,900,630 of £30,367,791/£51,386,687; 3.43x opening
2009’s Avatar up 56% £5,940,479 #1 493 screens and £32,815,618 of £93,442,625/£136,900,316; 14.1x opening
2017’s Dunkirk down 43% £4,624,570 #1 690 screens and £38,191,064 of £56,797,955; 5.65x opening
Phil Lord and Christopher Miller previously directed.
2012’s 21 Jump Street dropped 18.7% £962,537/£1,210,349 and £5,557,936 56.3% of £9,863,555/£12,402,995
2014’s The Lego Movie dropped 49.8% £3,266,594/£3,531,096 and £26,671,764 81.1% of £32,887,286/£39,200,470
2014’s 22 Jump Street dropped 32.1% £1,530,775/£1,654,724 and £12,744,567 69.5% of £18,322,998/£21,840,359. also directed 2009’s Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.
13th biggest film over the last 52 weeks between How To Train Your Dragon and F1 (close to Wuthering Heights, The Fantastic Four, Hamnet and Sinners).
271st biggest between Dune Part 1 and Mr Bean’s Holiday (close to Wall·E, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Men in Black 3 and Crocodile Dundee) and 525th biggest inflated between Spice World and Chicken Little (close to Beverly Hills Cop II, Starsky & Hutch, 22 Jump Street and Solo: A Star Wars Story).
- 3. The Drama £2,144,798 – NE
Took £836k 38.97% Saturday; £713k 33.24% Saturday; £564k 26.29% Sunday; took £621k Monday; £390k Tuesday.
874th biggest opening between Safe House and Ride Along 2 (close to The Invisible Man, Get Out, Angel Has Fallen and True Lies) and 1,338th biggest inflated opening between The Hitman’s Bodyguard and The Addams Family 2 (close to Love and Other Drugs, Just Go With it, The Sum Of All Fears and Adams Family Values).
37th biggest opening over the last 52 weeks between The Roses and Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie (close to Sinners, Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, The Naked Gun and Tron: Ares).
166th widest opening (646 cinemas) close to Fly Me To The Moon, Magic Mike’s Last Dance, Spider-Man: Far From Home and Creed III; 303rd 600+ cinema opening since 2015’s Jurassic World
Entertainment Films has been heavily promoting The Drama for weeks; the advert has been on the back of The Sunday Times Culture for months. Starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, it has sparked interest with its trailer: friends are asked what the worst thing they’ve done is; they reveal it, but we don’t hear what Zendaya says. That line has since been revealed and has generated considerable controversy. Reviews are positive, but audience reaction has been mixed, as it all depends on your view of the secret.
Kristoffer Borgli has built a career on clinical provocations. Sick of Myself watched a woman disfigure herself for attention. Dream Scenario turned a hapless professor into a viral nightmare. His films dissect performance, narcissism, and the gap between how we want to be seen and who we actually are. The Drama continues that project, but here the provocation is a school‑shooting confession buried inside a romantic comedy. Borgli thinks he’s being clever: a twist that forces us to weigh a past thought against a present betrayal. But the cleverness is hollow, the moral equivalence he tries to draw, Emma’s imagined violence versus Charlie’s actual affair, collapses under scrutiny. A thought has no victims. An action does.
Yet the film’s real insight is not the one Borgli intended. It’s the audience’s reaction. When Robert Pattinson’s character cheats, many viewers instinctively search for excuses: Emma’s secret must have driven him to it, and his betrayal is understandable. When Zendaya’s character confesses a dark thought, she is condemned as a monster. The double standard is stark: a man’s action is excused as a reaction; a woman’s thought is treated as an unforgivable stain. If the roles were reversed, Pattinson confessing the shooting fantasy, Zendaya having the affair, the sympathy would flip. He would be a troubled soul; she would be the worst kind of betrayer. The film doesn’t need to state this. The audience’s own biases perform the drama off‑screen.
There is surely misogyny at the heart of The Drama, that something everyone does daily thinking about doing something bad, is far worse that doing something that you have thought out the consequences but still done it for your own selfish reasons, as surely if Charlie loves Emma he would never have gone through with the affair with Rachel as he must have been aware of the damage it would cause. While thinking about doing something as seen in the film Minority Report doesn’t mean that it is their future, as Doc Brown says to Jennifer in Back to the Future 3, after the note she brought back from the future erased, “It means your future hasn’t been written yet. No one’s has. Your future is whatever you make it”.
Thirty years ago, Indecent Proposal asked a similar question about trust, fantasy, and the price of a night. A young couple accepts a million dollars from Robert Redford for one night with Demi Moore. The deal is made. The act is done. But the damage is not in the act itself, it’s in the suspicion, the jealousy, the unshakeable thought that something irreplaceable has been lost. The film understood that sometimes the thought of betrayal is more corrosive than the deed.
The Drama inverts that: it insists that a past thought is as damaging as a present action, but it refuses to interrogate why the audience forgives the handsome man’s affair while condemning the beautiful woman’s confession. Borgli’s clinical detachment may have been meant to expose hypocrisy, but instead it merely replicates it. The real drama, as you’ve shown, is not on the screen. It’s in the culture that watches.
Comparisons to The Drama have been made to films including Closer, The Lobster, Triangle of Sadness and Marriage Story; they all explore the dark underbelly of relationships, but approach the gap between thought and action in very different ways.
But The Drama feels so different. It’s not just about betrayal or power or social pressure. It’s about the stories we tell ourselves about who is worthy of forgiveness and who is not.
That said, would the reactions to The Drama be different if the leads weren’t Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, or if it were the other way round, with Robert Pattinson with the thought and Zendaya having the affair?
Japanese saying is that we all have 3 different faces “The first one you show to the world, the second you show to your family, and the last you never show to anyone” This is similar to what Colombian novelist and Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez said we have three parts to our personality, the public side (the one we are in the outside world), the private side (the one we are with family and loved ones) and the secret side (we don’t share with anyone, our private thoughts we keep I our head, now we often share these fears and desires with AI rather than botting them up.
In The Drama, Emma’s school shooting plan was detailed and developed. She had the weapon, she had the video manifesto ready, and she had lost hearing in one ear from practising. But then a classmate died in a real shooting at a local mall, and Emma stopped. She threw the rifle into a river and became a gun control activist. The movie argues that this choice, to walk away, is what matters, not the plan itself.
Minority Report makes the same argument, even more explicitly. John Anderton is told by the precogs that he will kill a man named Leo Crow. He tracks Crow down, gun in hand. Crow seems to confess to kidnapping and murdering Anderton’s son. But at the last moment, Anderton sees the truth: Crow is an innocent man, set up to be killed by the system Anderton helped create. Anderton chooses not to pull the trigger.
The film’s key line is when Anderton is confronted by his former mentor, Lamar Burgess. Anderton says, “You know your own future, which means you can change it if you want to. You still have a choice, Lamar. Like I did.”
That’s the philosophy of both films. Knowing the future means you can change it. Planning something doesn’t mean you have to do it. Walking away is always an option.
Emma walked away. Anderton walked away. The moral of both stories is the same: what defines you is not your darkest thought or your most detailed plan, but the choice you make in the moment of truth. The choice to stop. The choice to be better. The choice to walk away.
It will be interesting to see how The Drama holds over the coming week now that the twist has been revealed.
- 4. The Magic Faraway Tree £2,115,988 – £7,646,448
Down 25.5% in its second weekend
£916k 43.3% (+54.7% £592k) Fri; £746k 35.26% (£1.1m -32.2%) Sat; £449k 21.2% (-66.9% £1.36m) Sun; took £675k Mon; £488k Tues.
465th biggest second weekend between Alien: Covenant and The Meg (close to Mrs Brown’s Boys d’Movie, Christopher Robin, Peter Rabbit 2 and Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian) and 776th biggest inflated second weekend between Jack Reacher and Step Up 2 (close to Angry Birds, Treasure Planet, Gulliver’s Travels and The Polar Express).
24th biggest second weekend over the last 52 weeks between Downton Abbey 3 and Final Destination: Bloodlines (close to Thunderbolts, Hoppers, The Roses and The Bad Guys 2).
It’s hard to find similar films to The Magic Faraway Tree based on classic British children’s novels, like The Chronicles of Narnia and The BFG, which were made on a far bigger scale, funded by US studios. The Magic Faraway Tree is the kind of British film Polygram would have made 30 years ago, but now they are either made on a much lower scale or as Paddington, financed by an international company. It’s what the British film industry has been for the last 30+ years, despite billions spent on film production in the UK and hundreds of millions of lottery funding, British films on the scale of The Magic Faraway Tree have been a rarity.
It’s the kind of film that would be made in the UK if they had a self-sufficient film industry. This could have happened if the National Lottery franchises, which were launched 30 years ago, were properly managed and weren’t just white elephants. The one British film distributor that refused a franchise was Entertainment Films, the only British company still operating as it was 30 years ago and still investing in British films. As most British films are too quaint and old-fashioned to play to a wide audience, they are more like the Nativity films.
So, the only films that can be compared include
1997’s The Borrowers dropped 19.1% £818,878/£1,611,600 and £2,094,406 27.4% of £7,643,045/£15,041,963
1992’s Hook up 10.8% £1,764,691/£4,403,481 and £5,577,243 42.58% of £13,099,578/£32,687,732
Entertainment Films has a long history of acquiring British films, promoting them heavily with many successful films, including Shooting Fish, The Inbetweeners Movie, St Trinian’s, Fisherman’s Friends, Sunshine on Leith and Run Fatboy Run and also films like Sex Lives of the Potato Men.
Next year will be the 50th anniversary of Entertainment Films; they have outlasted so many other independent UK distributors, either closed or sold, like Redbus and Optimum. Electric and Rank over the last 30 years. EFD also had huge success having an output deal with New Line Cinema that saw them release the Lord of the Rings Trilogy between 2001 and 2003, taking £200m in the UK. Entertainment Films has acquired many high-profile US films over the last 35+ years, including the original live-action 1993 Super Mario Bros.
- 5. Hoppers £542,843 – £12,481,828
Took £230k 42.36% (+49.35% £154k) Fri; £191k 35.17% Sat; £119k 21.9% Sunday; £161k Mon; £126k Tuesday.
Dropped 47% in its fifth weekend.
470th biggest fifth weekend between Spider-Man 2 and Armageddon (close to The Spiderwick Chronicles, Scooby-Doo Too, Elf and School Of Rock) and 698th biggest inflated fifth weekend between Coraline and Kick-Ass (close to The Birdcage, Ant-Man and The Wasp, The Usual Suspects and Herbie: Fully Loaded).
20th biggest Pixar fourth weekend between Cars and Incredibles (close to Wall-E, Brave, The Good Dinosaur and Cars 2).
Performing similarly to recent Pixar’s fifth weekend, including
2008’s Wall-e dropped 44.3% £783,335/£1,206,637 and £19,165,909 85.8% of £22,340,631/£34,413,164
2023’s Elemental dropped 28.9% £832,954 and £14,069,962 76% of £18,151,466
20006’s Cars dropped 41% £556,581/£915,444 and £14,242,320 88.4% of £16,099,943/£26,480,604
2015’s The Good Dinosaur dropped 55.2% £398,994/£443,265 and £10,087,292 68.1% of £14,810,130/£16,453,418
585th biggest between Jungle Cruise and The Departed (close to Space Jam: A New Legacy, Lyle, Lyle Crocodile, Sliding Doors and Ghostbusters (1984) and 992nd biggest inflated between The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Smallfoot (close to Beetlejuice, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, James And The Giant Peach and 21 Jump Street).
113th biggest animated film between Wish and The Lion King 3D (close to Lilo & Stitch (2002), Goat, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 and Over the Hedge) and 141st biggest inflated animated film between South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut and Smallfoot (close to Megamind, Horton Hears a Who, Early Man and Cars 3).
Next from Pixar is Toy Story 5 in June, Gatto opening in March 2027 (weeks after How To Train Your Dragon 2, as Elio was with the first film) and then Incredibles 3 in June 2028, with Coco 2 undated, November 2029.
Also opened
• Fuze – Studiocanal UK
Opened £301,959 #5 from 422 cinemas.
The British heist film starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Theo James, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Sam Worthington, and directed by David Mackenzie. Received positive reviews, while the film was acquired by Sky Cinema as with other acquisitions including Nurenberg, The Beekeeper, Lee and Ferrari the film was shown same day on Sky Cinema, and that message didn’t seem to be filtered through to the critics, who said it was also on Sky Cinema at the same time, which likely hurt its potential box office.
Sky Cinema launched their Originals films in 2016 with Monster Family at first they were shown on Sky Cinema same day and that saw major exhibitors refuse to book their films, but over the years they have acquired more high profile films like Ferrari, Lee, Nurenberg, The Beekeeper partnering with Studiocanal on many of them looking after UK cinema distribution and giving them a 4 week window which saw major exhibitors book the films and has seen them perform steadily in the UK.
These films are heavily marketed by Sky Cinema, and with these more high-profile films find an audience in cinemas before premiering on Sky Cinema a month later.
——————–
BO is currently up 11% from 2025.
The weekend’s top 10 box office took £24,431,101, up 121.7% from last weekend’s £11,018,005: 3,048,451 admissions, up 121.6% from 1,375,531 admissions.
Biggest weekend of the last 52 weeks ahead of 21 November 2025 #1 Wicked: For Good £18,858,825 (84.59%) and 23 May 2025 #1 Lilo & Stitch £9,568,923 (43.63%)
8th biggest since cinemas reopened out of 281 weeks between 26 December 2024 #1 Sonic the Hedgehog 3 £11,760,314 (48.13%) and 26 July 2024 #1 Deadpool and Wolverine £17,276,621 (71.35%)
33rd biggest top 10 of the last 25 years (out of 1,252) between 26 December 2024 #1 Sonic the Hedgehog 3 £11,760,314 (48.13%) and 26 July 2024 #1 Deadpool and Wolverine £17,276,621 (71.35%) and 94th biggest inflated between 26 December 2024 #1 Sonic the Hedgehog 3 £11,760,314 (48.13%) and 24 October 2008 #1 High School Musical 3 £8,409,375 (53.14%)
The top 3 took £20,566,291 (84.2%) of the top 10; The Super Mario Galaxy Movie x% (£x); Project Hail Mary 43.35% (£4,776,660); The Magic Faraway Tree 25.76% (£2,838,248)
146th biggest percentage share #1 (61.39%) between 13 February 2015 #1 Fifty Shades of Grey £13,550,290 (61.45%) and 13 June 2025 #1 How To Train Your Dragon £8,145,188 (61.34%)
85th biggest admissions (1,871,533) between 14 April 2017 #1 Fast & Furious 8 £14,026,301 (1,872,670) and 21 June 2019 #1 Toy Story 4 £13,300,000 (1,870,605)
Up 25.78% from 2025; (£19,423,078); A Minecraft Movie (£15,013,136); Six The Musical (£2,139,374); Death Of A Unicorn (£487,459); Mr. Burton (£138,682); Muriel’s Wedding (30th Anniversary) (£16,550); #1 A Minecraft Movie £15,013,136 1st week 677 screens (77.30%)
Up 166.53% 2024 (£9,166,231); Monkey Man (£810,253); The First Omen (£521,573); Seize Them! (£132,207); Luca (£110,964); On The Waterfront (70th Anniversary 4K Restoration) (£6,988); #1 Kung Fu Panda 4 £2,834,711 2nd week 44% drop 721 screens (30.93%)
Up 15.32% from 2023; (£21,185,037); Super Mario Bros (£15,691,810); Air (£1,174,554); The Pope’s Exorcist (£707,050); Superman (45th Anniversary) (£15,399); #1 Super Mario Bros £15,691,810 1st week 718 screens (74.07% of top 10)
Up 108.67% from 2022 (£11,707,957); Fantastic Beasts 3 (£5,884,934); The Outfit (£96,600); Julia (£1,471); #1 Fantastic Beasts 3 £5,884,934 1st week 711 screens (50.3% of top 10)
2021 Lockdown
2020 Lockdown
Up 79.26% from 2019: (£13,628,514); Shazam! (£4,067,068); Pet Sematary (£1,554,881); Peppa Pig: Festival of Fun (£982,617); Missing Link (£644,649); The Sisters Brothers (£253,187); The Golden Age – Bolshoi Ballet 2019 (£76,563); A Clockwork Orange, (Re: 2019) (£45,913); #1 Shazam! £4,067,068 1st week 599 screens (29.84% of top 10)
Up 83.85% from 2018: (£13,288,645); A Quiet Place (£2,696,892); Love, Simon (£1,179,593); Ghost Stories (£591,787); Death Wish (£156,795); Giselle – Bolshoi 2018 (£124,824); 120 Beats per Minute (£76,509); Thoroughbreds (£50,811); Wonderstruck (£30,642); The Hurricane Heist (£23,348); #1 Peter Rabbit £3,152,269 down 44% 4 weeks
Up 62.73% from 2017: (£15,013,493); The Boss Baby (£8,025,886); Peppa Pig: My First Cinema Experience (£1,050,962); Going in Style (£569,392); Table 19 (£130,602); City of Tiny Lights (£28,038); Raw (£67,042); #1 The Boss Baby £8,025,886 1st week.
Up 75.65% from 2016: (£11,079,652); The Huntsman: Winter’s War (£3,032,962); Midnight Special (£497,109); Hardcore Henry (£201,827); The Man Who Knew Infinity (£147,990); #1 The Huntsman: Winter’s War £3,032,962 1st week.
Up 120.94% from 2015; (£22,075,680); Fast & Furious 7 (£12,765,033); The Water Diviner (£521,546); While We’re Young (£427,151); Blade Runner: The Final Cut (Re: 2015) (£267,452); #1 Fast & Furious 7 £12,765,033 1st week.
Up 94.74% from 2014: (£12,545,501); Rio 2 (£2,882,680); Noah (£2,511,397); Divergent (£1,767,295); La Boheme – Met Opera 2014 (£374,522); The Double (£281,794); #1 Rio 2 £2,882,680 1st week.
Up 204.81% from 2013: (£8,015,138); Dark Skies (£1,031,948); Spring Breakers (£345,153); The Odd Life of Timothy Green (£269,465); A Late Quartet (£107,158); #1 The Croods £2,364,348 3rd week 28% drop
Up 77.07% from 2012 (£13,797,117); Titanic 3D (£2,856,540); Mirror Mirror (£2,389,033); The Pirates! In An Adventure with Scientists (£2,166,162); The Cold Light of Day (£503,985); Headhunters (£264,769); #1 Titanic 3D £2,856,540 1st week 427 screens (20.7% of top 10)
Up 412.14% from 2011; (£4,770,365); Rio (£1,515,853); The Roommate (£120,365); Mars Needs Mums (£113,559); Tomorrow, When the War Began (£85,841); Silent House (£8,539); #1 Rio £1,515,853 1st week.
Up 175.70% from 2010: (£8,861,394); Whip It! (£353,041); I Am Love (£171,959); Shelter (£141,452); The Infidel (£135,448); #1 Clash of the Titans £2,441,682 2nd week 57% drop.
Up 140.18% from 2009; (£10,172,026); Monsters vs. Aliens (£4,345,711); The Boat that Rocked (£1,804,773); Religulous (£18,736); #1 Monsters vs. Aliens £4,345,711 1st week.
Up 268.85% from 2008; (£6,623,644); Son of Rambow (£897,089); Never Back Down (£845,530); Awake (£546,562); One Missed Call (£432,327); Funny Games (£88,376); How She Move (£78,771); #1 27 Dresses £1,028,661 2nd week 41% drop.
Up 247.69% from 2007: (£7,026,692); Blades of Glory (£1,023,836); Sunshine (£1,021,063); The Messengers (262,562); #1 Mr Beans Holiday £2,451,283 2nd week 62% drop
Up 71.69% from 2006; (£14,229,376): Ice Age II (£9,775,974); She’s The Man (£994,304); Alien Autopsy (£796,119); The Dark (£265,084); #1 Ice Age II £9,775,974 1st week 502 screens (68.7% of top 10)
Up 256.42% from 2005 (£6,854,564); Sahara (£1,370,577); The Assassination of Richard Nixon (£157,756); Man of the House (£126,331); #1 Sahara £1,370,577 399 screens 1st week (20% of top 10)
Up 112.86% from 2004 (£11,477,491); Scooby-Doo Too (£3,549,487); The Cat in the Hat (£1,739,814); Gothika (£1,398,777); Monster (£320,983); #1 Scooby-Doo Too £3,549,487 489 screens 1st week (30.93%)
Up 472.07% from 2003 (£4,270,657); Shanghai Knights (£749,655); A Man Apart (£527,730); Blue Crush (£491,419); #1 The Recruit £770,014 2nd week (3rd weekend down 17% 378 screens (18.1% of top 10)
Up 277.84% from 2002 (£6,466,007); Collateral Damage (£434,639); 24 Hour Party People (£265,428); Kate & Leopold (£204,325); #1 Blade 2 £1,335,594 2nd week 47% drop
2025 Next week: (£11,429,088); The Amateur (£1,101,452); Andre Rieu’s 75th Birthday Celebration: The Dream Continues (£596,897); Drop (£382,902); The Chosen: The Last Supper – Episodes 1 & 2 (£256,797); Babe (30th Anniversary) (£18,448); #1 A Minecraft Movie £7,201,921 2nd week down 52% 720 screens (63.01% of top 10)
US Box Office
- The Super Mario Galaxy Movie – Universal Pictures
Opened $131.7m (and $190.5m 5 days); received poor reviews (41% Rotten Tomatoes) and an A- CinemaScore.
49th biggest opening between Deadpool and Frozen II (close to Finding Dory, Avatar: The Way of Water, Iron Man 2 and Top Gun: Maverick)
IMAX/PLF/3D took 44% of the opening; 430 IMAX cinemas 430 took 8% ($15m); PLFs 19%, and 3D 17%.
Took $22.2m IMAX worldwide; US $15m and $7.2m international.
2023’s Super Mario Bros opened $146.36m and $195.3m in its first 5 days and received mixed reviews (56% Rotten Tomatoes) and an A CinemaScore; it took 27% from IMAX/PLF
2025’s A Minecraft Movie opened $162.75m; received mixed reviews (49% Rotten Tomatoes); and a B+ CinemaScore
The trailers for The Super Mario Galaxy Movie were seen by over 1 billion times thanks in part to featuring in front of Wicked: For Good and Zootopia 2; but it again asks the question how many times do people need to see the trailer to get them to see the film as $190.5m US opening is about 15m admissions and the global opening $372.5m is about 31m, so does this me they need to see the trailer about 10 times before they go and see it in the cinema. As the Spider-Man: Brand New Day trailer had 1 billion views, surely these numbers are similar to the billions of minutes streamers now use to claim massive viewing numbers for TV shows and films.
RelishMix said social media of Super Mario Galaxy Movie was 775.6m across TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, X and Instagram; the film had a global promo tour including on the starting grid at the Japanese’s F1 Grand Prix; the voice cast is very active across social media with over 135m fans; Chris Pratt’s 63.2m; Jack Black at 48.7m; Anya Taylor-Joy 12.5m; Brie Larson 9.3m.
2023’s Super Mario Bros had the biggest global opening for an animation and video game ahead of Frozen 2‘s $358m and Warcraft‘s $210m; opened with $173m from 70 territories and $377.5m worldwide; Mexico $27.4m; UK $19.6; Germany $14m; China $12m; France $10.4m; Australia $8.3m; Italy $7.9m; Brazil $6.9m; $21.6m from IMAX worldwide including $5m internationally.
2025’s A Minecraft Movie opened with $144m from 75 territories in 32,000 screens and $301m worldwide; UK $19.9m; China $14.5m; Mexico $11.2m; Germany $10.6m; Australia $8.3m; Poland $6.2m; Brazil $5.8m; France $5.6m; Spain $5.6m; Italy $5.3m; Argentina $3.6m; Holland $3.0m.
On Saturday, Universal Pictures estimated Mario Galaxy Movie would open with $370.7m worldwide; the biggest global opening since Avatar: Fire & Ash, slightly less than the 2023 Super Mario Bros $387.8m. saying it would open with $182.5m from 80 territories (23,500 cinemas and 54,000 screens worldwide)
It was the fifth biggest global opening ever for an animated film and the fourth biggest US animated opening after Zootopia 2, Moana 2 and The Super Mario Bros. Movie
2nd biggest global opening for Illumination after The Super Mario Bros. Movie; 2nd biggest global opening for a film based on a video game after The Super Mario Bros. Movie; 5th biggest global Universal Pictures behind The Super Mario Bros. Movie (it was always expected to do this)
Opened with $182.4m from 80 territories and $372.5m worldwide; Mexico $29.1m; UK $19.7m; Germany $15.8m; France $13m; Spain $10.8m; China $8.4m; Italy $7.8m; Australia $6.4m; Colombia $5.4m; Brazil $5.3m.
- Project Hail Mary – MGM/Amazon
Dropped 41% in its third weekend $31.72m and $210.25m.
60th biggest third weekend between Iron Man and Frozen (close to Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Gravity and Joker)
Kept 15 screens in 70mm IMAX (including BFI IMAX), with all other IMAX/PLF to Mario 2.
EntTelligence average ticket prices $15.53 (standard) and $18.89 (PLF/IMAX).
Third weekend
2025’s Sinners dropped 27.6%, 33.1m #2 and $179.83m of $279.98m and $369.88m worldwide
2024’s Dune Part 2 dropped 38% $28.5m and $204.72m of $282.14m and $714.84m worldwide
2021’s Dune dropped 49.5% $7.79m and $84.11m of $108.89m and $433.79m worldwide
2010’s Inception dropped 35.7% $27.48m and $193.31m of $292.58m and $839.03m worldwide
2023’s Oppenheimer dropped 37.6% $29.12m and $228.98m of $329.01m and $957.59m worldwide
2013’s Gravity dropped 30.5% $30.02m and $169.56m of $274.09m and $773.03m worldwide
2014’s Interstellar dropped 45.8% $15.34m and $120.93m of $188.02m and $731.07m worldwide
2015’s The Martian dropped 42.4% $21.3m and $143.59m of $228.43m and $630.62m worldwide
2016’s Arrival dropped 5.6% $11.45m and $62.56m of $100.54m and $203.38m worldwide
2017’s Blade Runner 2049 dropped 52.5% $7.35m and $74.2m of $92.07m and $267.68m worldwide
2017’s Logan dropped 53.3% $17.81m and $184.34m of $226.27m and $619.02m worldwide
2009’s Avatar dropped 9.4% $68.49m and $352.11m of $749.76m and $2.743bn worldwide
Took $73.6m from IMAX worldwide.
Internationally Dune Part 2 third weekend $51.2m from 73 territories $289.4m total and $494.7m worldwide; China $36.1m; UK $32.8m; Germany $25m; France $24.9m; Australia $15.6m; S. Korea $13.7m; Spain $9.8m; Italy $9.1m; Mexico $9m; Poland $7.7m; Holland $6.9m.
Took $42.1m internationally and $203.6m from 71 territories and $420.7m worldwide; UK $29.1m; China $27.8m; Australia $14.7m; Germany $12.8m; S. Korea $12.3m; Mexico $10.4m; France $7.3m; Japan $7.1m; Spain $5.6m; Brazil $5.1m; India $4.7m; Italy $4.3m.
- Hoppers – Disney
Dropped 52% in its fifth weekend, $5.82m and $149.65m.
2023’s Elemental dropped 17.3% $10.03m and $109.62m of $154.42m and $496.44m worldwide
2024’s The Wild Robot dropped 27.9% $10.09m and $101.71m of $143.9m and $334.53m worldwide
2017’s Coco dropped 46.1% $9.94m and $150.73m of $210.46m and $814.64m worldwide
Took $12.4m internationally from 51 territories and $332.2m worldwide; China $20.4m; UK $16.6m; Mexico $14.2m; Germany $13.8m; Japan $12.2m; France $10.1m; Spain $8.2m; Taiwan $6.6m; Italy $5.8m.
- The Drama – A24
Opened $14.38m; received positive reviews (83% Rotten Tomatoes and B CinemaScore
Took $1.7m from Thursday previews, similar to Challengers $1.9m and The Materialists $1.5m.
2024’s Challengers opened $15.01m, taking $50.11m and $96.11m worldwide
It’s the first of three films starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson this year, starring in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey in July and Denis Villeneuve’s Dune Part 3 in December. Zendaya also stars in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, also opening in July.
Much has been written about the film. In the trailer, friends are asked what’s the worst thing they have done, they reveal what they have done, but don’t hear what Zendaya says, and that has become one of the twists in the film. As with Marty Supreme was it the marketing that got audiences to see the film or the star power of Zendaya and Robert Pattinson?
As Zendaya has previously starred in mostly tentpole Spider-Man and Dune films, while Robert Pattinson has starred in Twilight, Dune and The Batman, but when he has led in films like Tenet, Mickey 17, and Die My Love with Jennifer Lawrence, they haven’t found such wide audiences. Similar to Ryan Gosling, do they open films, or is it the films and the marketing that get audiences to see them?
Opened $13.6m internationally and $28m worldwide.
UK Box Office Top 10
Box Office Preview
The top 5 will remain similar this weekend as the new releases aren’t likely to have any impact on them. After The Super Mario Galaxy Movie took 40% of its opening from previews and the mixed word of mouth, it’s likely to drop about 60% in its second weekend, taking £5.8m-£6.5m. It would have added £8m-£10m over the second weekend of the Easter holidays.
2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie dropped 52% (14% without previews) £7,568,523, taking £35,855,948, 65.7% of £54,578,335
2025’s A Minecraft Movie dropped 52% £7,201,922 and £31,056,475 55.02% of £56,446,431
Project Hail Mary will hold strongly in its fourth weekend as it continues to pay beyond its original audience due to strong word of mouth, dropping about 30% £2.3m-£2.6m.
As it’s Easter holidays, The Magic Faraway Tree will switch with The Drama down again about 30% in its third weekend, taking £1.4m-£1.7m.
The Drama is harder to judge as it is a film about the twist, or is it about the star power of Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, so it will drop about 40%, taking £1.2m-£1.6m.
Opening the fifth BTS ‘ARIRANG’ Tour in Goyang and Tokyo Live Viewing, if it performs similarly to other recent BTS Concert films, including.
2022’s BTS – Permission to Dance on Stage Live opened £899,126 #3
2019’s Love Yourself In Seoul – BTS World Tour 2019 #10 £518,810 519 screens.
2018’s Burn the Stage: Movie #6 opened £644,308 from 212 screens
Otherwise, it could be a rom-com, You, Me & Tuscany, on paper, bringing the star of Disney’s The Little Mermaid reimagination, Halle Bailey and Netflix’s Bridgerton Regé-Jean Page and put them in a gorgeous location, which makes you think of romcoms like Anyone But You, but that worked due to Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell having genuine chemistry.
There has been very little pre-release marketing for You, Me & Tuscany and no reviews online (Wednesday). When Regé-Jean Page was in Bridgerton, he was on the shortlist for the next James Bond, but leaving the show after one series, the films he has starred in since haven’t been big hits.
The other two new release supernatural horror Undertone might spark up some scares, but after both Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come, and They Will Kill You disappointed, open in the bottom half of the top 10 alongside California Schemin’, directed by James McAvoy. While another week and another classic film celebrate their anniversaries, this weekend it’s Stand By Me. The 40th anniversary of Stand By Me is even more poignant as it comes soon after the sad death of its director, Rob Reiner, in December.
Tying its release with Michael’s preview, Michael Jackson was originally asked to record a cover of Stand By Me, but Rob Reiner decided to go with the original version.
Coming Soon
- Michael – Universal Pictures (Wednesday)
Musician biopic about Michael Jackson starring Jaafar Jackson, Nia Long, Laura Harrier, Miles Teller and Colman Domingo and directed by Antoine Fuqua, screenplay written by John Logan (Gladiator, The Last Samurai, Skyfall and Spectre) and produced by Graham King (Bohemian Rhapsody)
Development started in 2019 after producer Graham King had acquired rights to make a film about Michael Jackson a year after he had huge success producing the Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody for 20th Century Fox. Lionsgate announced the film in 2022 with Antoine Fuqua attached to direct in 2023. Originally, Lionsgate were going to release worldwide, but as the scale of the film increased, it brought in Universal Pictures to release the film internationally.
The last Michael Jackson film was 2009’s Michael Jackson’s This Is It, which is still the biggest concert film globally, taking $267.9m ahead of 2023’s Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour ($261.65m).
2009’s Michael Jackson’s This Is It opened £4,877,255/£7,181,399 taking £9,732,593/£14,330,528
And Michael Jackson’s 1988 Moonwalker opened £660,625/£2,300,698 taking £3,401,538/£11,846,226.
In February 2025, it was said the film had a 4-hour tuning time and could be released as two films; the final version is just over 2 hours. The film had extensive reshoots last June that included having to reshoot the third act due to legal issues. The film’s soundtrack includes 13 songs sung by Michael Jackson.
It was originally set to be released in October 2025, but was delayed due to the original running time and reshoots. Footage was first screened a year ago at CinemaCon with positive reactions. The first teaser trailer was released in November, including a montage of Jackson songs. It was seen 30m times in its first six hours and 116.2m times in 24 hours, more than Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, 96.1m.
Michael is the latest Biographical musician drama after Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen), Walk the Line (Johnny Cash), Ray (Ray Charles), Elvis, Straight Outta Compton (N.W.A), A Complete Unknown (Bob Dylan), Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere and Rocketman (Elton John); Upcoming musician biopics include Sam Mendes’s four Beatles films, and Ridley Scott directed Bee Gees biopic.
Over recent years, musician biopics have had mixed success, most recently Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere underwhelmed, opening £1,306,626, taking £3,632,978.
2025’s A Complete Unknown opened £2,616,302; Fri £775k 29.6%; Sat £1.02m 38.9%; Sun £771k 29.5% taking £11,887,982
2006’s Walk The Line opened £1,111,142/£1,807,032 198 screens taking £9,737,493/£15,835,923.
2022’s Elvis opened #1 740 screens £4,023,572; £1.25m (31.1%) Friday; £1.45m (36%) Sat £1.29m (36%) Sun; taking £27,492,430; had long legs staying in top 5 for 7 weeks and top 10 for 11 weeks.
2018’s Bohemian Rhapsody opened £9,530,463 #1 (£3,054,530 previews) taking £54,948,727 (opened the same weekend 7 years ago)
2019’s Rocketman opened £5,381,904 #2 705 screens (including £1,360,606 from three days of previews), taking £23,502,881: top 5 for 5 weeks and top 10 for 7 weeks
2024’s Back To Black opened £2,772,698, taking £12,291,912
2024’s Bob Marley: One Love opened £6,950,773 (including £1.82m on Valentine’s Day (Wednesday) taking £17,183,582
2023’s Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody £3,325,458 #2 687 screens taking £11,383,690
2015’s Straight Outta Compton £2,498,231 #1 429 screens taking £8,043,283
With Michael opening on Wednesday, they will surely be looking to repeat the opening of Bohemian Rhapsody, which opened £9,530,463 (£3,054,530 previews).
Demographically, DCM data shows the audience skews older: 49% aged 45+, with 15% 16-24 and 20% 25-34. This is a Bohemian Rhapsody audience.
Early US estimates are $60m-80m opening; Elvis opened soft ($31.2m), taking $151m; Bohemian Rhapsody opened to $51m and took $900 m worldwide. 8 years later, with Michael Jackson’s global reach, the $1bn globally should be expected. The only problem is, unlike Bohemian Rhapsody, Michael faces immediate competition the week after with The Devil Wears Prada 2
- Fight Club (4K Restoration) – Disney
Thriller starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Helena Bonham Carter, Meat Loaf and Jared Leto, directed by David Fincher, based on the 1996 novel by Chuck Palahniuk.
When 20th Century Fox first saw the film, their reaction wasn’t positive. Producer Art Linson described “ashen-faced executives imagining their higher-ups flopping around like acid-crazed carp, wondering how such a thing could even have happened”.
The film was originally set for release in July 1999, but was delayed. The shadow of the Columbine High School massacre, which had occurred just months earlier, made the studio nervous about releasing a film about bare-knuckle fighting, anti-social vandalism, and revolutionary terrorism.
20th Century Fox wanted David Fincher to remove the narrator’s line: “Well, I gotta tell you: I’d be very, very careful who you talk to about that, because the person who wrote that… is dangerous. And this button-down, Oxford-cloth psycho might just snap, and then stalk from office to office with an Armalite AR-10 carbine gas-powered semi-automatic weapon, pumping round after round into colleagues and co-workers. This might be someone you’ve known for years. Someone very, very close to you.”
Fincher refused, arguing the scene was “pivotal to the story” because it leads directly to Marla’s “My tit’s gonna rot off” phone call, a moment of dark comedy that undercuts the violence and reframes the entire scene. The scene stayed.
Fight Club was given an 18 by the BBFC after two scenes were cut. The BBFC judged that in both scenes “there was an indulgence in the excitement of beating a defenceless man’s face into a pulp” and required cuts. Both scenes were restored for the DVD release.
In 1999, the BBFC said, “The film as a whole is, quite clearly, sharply parodic of the amateur fascism which in part it portrays. Its central theme of male machismo, and the anti-social behaviour that flows from it, is emphatically rejected by the central character in the concluding reels”.
The film received polarised reactions from critics. Some called it “one of the most exciting, original and thought-provoking films of the year.” Others compared it to A Clockwork Orange, fearing it could incite copycat violence, the very reason Kubrick had withdrawn that film from UK cinemas for almost 30 years. Rex Reed called it “a film without a single redeeming quality, which may have to find its audience in hell”. Rosie O’Donnell implored viewers not to see it and, for good measure, gave away the twist on her talk show.
If social media and TikTok had existed in 1999, the backlash would have been seismic.
It feels strange to see Fight Club released by Walt Disney Studios—the Walt Disney brand was synonymous with U and PG films until 2003, a guarantee for children’s viewing. This highlights the contradiction of the Disney+ era.
Fight Club opened lower than expected in the US, taking just $37 million domestically against a $60+ million budget. It received a B- CinemaScore—audiences were as polarised as critics. The film performed better internationally, taking $101.3 million worldwide. In the UK, it opened to £1,177,219 from 322 screens, taking £5,018,967.
Fight Club is re-released in cinemas for one day on April 22, 2026, before being released on 4K Ultra HD in May.
The film was last re-released in cinemas by Park Circus in 2024 for its 25th anniversary. By then, the BBFC had reduced its certificate from 18 to 15. It opened to £82,580 from 243 screens.
- Mother Mary – A24
Psychological thriller starring Anne Hathaway, Michaela Coel, Hunter Schafer, Atheena Frizzell, Kaia Gerber, Jessica Brown Findlay and directed by David Lowery. (Pete’s Dragon)