Top 5 Breakdown

1. Star Wars: The Force Awakens – £10,118,706 – £65,822,258 (£72.1m Inc. Monday)

(2D 59.1%) 2D £5,984,140 total £36,925,419 (56.1% of total)
(3D 28.9%) 3D took £2,931,463 total £21,914,507 (33.2% of total) (IMAX 11.8%) IMAX 3D £1,203,103 total £6,844,923 from 41 screens 10.3% of total)

Reached £50m in 7 days compared with SPECTRE in 11 days and 14 days for Jurassic World

Currently seventh biggest film in the UK by next weekend it will likely be up to fourth. But can’t be compared with films like Titanic and Avatar. Titanic’s £80m taken in 2008 would be over £113m in 2015 while Avatar’s £94.5m would be at least £110m assuming inflation  was only 2% but UK cinema ticket prices have gone up at least 5% each year.

Tuesday it become Disney’s biggest film ever in the UK beating 2010’s Toy Story 3’s £74m

On Monday added £6.25m the biggest ever Monday at the UK box office.

After opening so big was always going to have a big drop in its second weekend but 70.1% is much more than normal as it was only a two-day weekend but if you include Monday’s £6.25m its £16.36m second weekend down 51.8% from opening weekend.

Hard to compare with any of these second weekends as all three second weekends weren’t holiday weekends while SPECTRE drop was from 6.5 days to second 3-day weekend. While The Force Awaken box office will be shared over the two weeks more of holidays.

While tickets in London’s flagship Leicester Square cinemas cost up to £28 to see The Force Awakens and over $30 to see it in New York and Los Angeles to see it at the biggest cinema (2,800 seater) in Europe Grand Rex in Paris top price tickets are only £7.77.

During many interviews for the film Harrison Ford joked many times he did it for the money with rumours he was paid 50 times more than many other cast members this might be true.

Star Wars fans are crazy seen by the several news stories last week after a fan was arrested after threatening to shoot a friend who spoiled the film. Browsers, Facebook and Twitter all set up filters to protect fans from spoilers.

Was a lot of footage in the trailers which wasn’t in the film this sometimes happens but some possibly thought this was done to avoid spoilers. The first edit was 2hrs 40 mins cut down to 2hrs 16 mins  with many websites describing the many extra scenes mentioned in the novel  and trailers that aren’t in the final cut. Some have speculated that there could be another cut released in months to come similar to Avatar as many of these scenes were close to finished SFX.

Are always many parody Twitter accounts created by fans for films one of the best for The Force Awakens has been Emo Kylo Ren with his spoilt brat comments similar to younger Anakin and Luke so it could be a side effect of using The Force.

Did The Simpsons predict Star Wars with a 2009 episode featuring Star Wars opening the same weekend as Alvin and the Chipmunks sequel?

The Hollywood Reporter hosted a Q&A for Academy featuring J.J. Abrams, Kathleen Kennedy, Lawrence Kasdan, VFX supervisor Roger Guyett, editors Mary Jo Markey and Maryann Brandon.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/video/star-wars-force-awakens-q-850775

While Academy screeners have been leaked for many potential Oscar contenders The Hateful Eight, The Revenant and Steve Jobs Disney didn’t send screeners of The Force Awakens to avoid piracy.  The Force Awakens has been included in a few smaller film awards but will The Forcer Awakens be nominated for major awards at the Oscars and BAFTAs as the original Star Wars and Avatar was it will of course get many technical nominations.

After Salon film critic website gave The Force Awakens a poor review he was inundated with hate letters and death threats. He was seen as one of the “Hateful Four” who dared to give the film a negative. Another critic giving it a thumbs down was Vatican Film Critic from L’Osservatore Romano but it’s unlikely to influence Pope Francis as he doesn’t watch movies. But doubt the Vatican received death threats. Some films The Force Awakens and SPECTRE many critics seem to get caught up in the hype reviewing the film through the hype with early reviews written immediately after screenings 5 stars from The Times for both which were picked up by TV and radio as soon as the embargo broke the next morning.

Star Wars fans have watched the film multiple times breaking down every scene looking for hidden meanings with some thinking the opening line “This will begin to make things right.” Is aimed at George Lucas and his prequels.

The leader of ISIS Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi released a message to its followers with many responding on Twitter rather than take up arms, killing infidels or enslave women want to see Star Wars instead and don’t want to risk dying until the next is released in 2017.

The original title was to be Shadow of the Empire which was going to be the title of a 1996 book that took place between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

Fans have now seen the film many times and have broken down every element to the film I won’t put any spoilers but interesting thing some have picked up on is in the opening crawl which doesn’t use proper English grammar to identify Luke as Leia’s brother with some suggesting she could have another brother.

2015 has been the year of remakequel aka legacyquels giving audiences feeling of Deja-vu many films of 2015 extracting large chunks of plots and characters from previous films made decades ago but as they are set years later are seen more as remakes than sequels.

Seen with Jurassic World, Terminator Genisys, Vacation, Creed and Star Wars The Force Awakens (is fan fiction remake similar to 50 Shades of Grey was to Twilight). Why so many have been enjoyable to watch as it’s like visiting old friends or reading an old book you loved when you were younger. But after you have watched them they feel like eating a Big Mac as your left hungry wanting more. Why many have gone back to see it again and again.

2. Snoopy and Charlie Brown £3,636,162 – NE (inc. £4.16m Monday)

2D took £557,886 with previews £3,427,012 – 3D took £34,633 with previews £209,149

After having a 13 day opening weekend with 10 days of previews which took 83.7% of box office massively inflating its opening. Fox would have hoped with limited competition for younger audiences over Christmas holidays would have performed much stronger over the weekend. But added strong £521,808 on Monday.

Over the last three weekends of previews took
December 5th/6th – £300,000
December 12th/13th – £417,788
December 19th/20th – £463,046

None of these totals gave it much promise of a big opening weekend but of course being able to combine them into one has made it look far more respectful opening.

3. Daddy’s Home – £1,616,469 – NE (inc. Monday £2.61m)

While it was the biggest ever Boxing Day would of expecting new releases to flourish as most seen The Force Awakens as many times as plan to see it but then disappointed to see a lack of new releases; but as it’s the weekend was only two days hard to directly compare with others

The film asks the question who would you rather have as a dad man best friend is a teddy bear or who is an evil Lego overlord. Mark Wahlberg as the biological dad has a similar role as he had in 2010 comedy Date Night.

It’s the second film Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg starred together with previous was The Other Guys that opened with £1.98m in September 2010

Will Ferrell last film Get Hard opened in March with £1.43m away from Transformers and Ted sequels Mark Wahlberg last original comedy was Pain & Gain opened in August 2013 with £1.1m.

4. In The Heart of the Sea £668,377- NE (inc. Monday £689,000)

2D took £312,327 – 3D took £132,525 with previews £256,051

Chris Hemsworth teams up with his Rush director again but this time unsuccessfully; after Warner Bros delayed the release last January from March to December opening the weekend before The Force Awakens in the US and after in the UK the writing was always on the wall. Warner delayed saying biographical dramas perform better in December would normally be true had it not been for Star Wars. That’s not to say had it opened in March would have done much better after getting mixed reviews from critics but would of had a better chance to find an audience. Its rare that a film is successful after it was delayed apart from Gravity and The Great Gatsby; Rush opened September 2013 with £2.08m

The shame is this could see the end of the big budget original film with studios more reliant than ever with sequels, reboots and remakes; Warner Bros tried to mix it up this year after delaying Batman Vs. Superman till 2016 its original film such as Focus and Jupiter Ascending failed to match success of their re-imagining San Andreas (Earthquake), Mad Max Fury Road and Creed.

5. The Good Dinosaur £396,983 – total £10,081,421

2D took £393,839– total £9,154,674 – 3D took £3,144 – total £926,747

Dropping 55.3% but has performed steadily over the first week of school holidays. But It won’t manage to get to the heights of previous Pixar releases and is now unlikely to match 2011’s £15.62m Cars 2 likely be the lowest grossing Pixar film in the UK.

Other box office news:

Sisters – Universal – suffered a massive drop in its second/third weekend would have expected it to hold far better with so few other films on release but shows how these extending opening weekends only shorten the release of a film.
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This weekend’s top 10 box office took £17,050,101 down 55.5% from last weekend £38,395,028; was up 4.2% from same weekend last year. (£16,351,139)

Star Wars The Force Awakens took 59.3%* of top 10 box office compared to Spectre 73.7%, Avengers: Age of Ultron’s 74.3% Jurassic World 57.1% and 50 Shades of Grey 33%.

(*With weekend missing Friday box office due to Christmas Day along with box office more evenly spread across the week during holidays and Snoopy & Charlie Browns inflated 9 day opening its share is much lower than it would have been)

Last year Exodus: Gods and Kings – £2,604,812, Annie – £2,307,751 and Unbroken £655,009.

This weekend last year The Theory of Everything opened £3,746,296, The Woman in Black: Angel of Death £2,430,740 and Birdman £1,154,294.

 

** Snoopy and Charlie Brown had three weekends of previews before opening on December 21st taking £3,636,162 over than 11-day opening £592,518 is the box office taken for the weekend

US Box Office

1. Disney’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens $149m down 40.1% in its second weekend and $544.5m to date; many expected to drop less over lucrative Christmas weekend as drop is far bigger than any of the top 10 films.

Second weekend was estimated at $154m before coming down to $149m still the biggest ever second weekend ahead of the previous high $106m Jurassic World; The Force Awakens is performing similar to Jurassic World; I predicted second weekend of $145m with third of $80m and fourth $44m losing top spot to Ride Along 2 in its fifth weekend; in comparison Avatar stayed top for 7 weeks and Titanic 15 weeks.

Much has been made from Star Wars The Force Awakens crossing $1 billion in a week becoming the biggest ever Star Wars film ever but with the last Star Wars film released 10 years’ box office for films cannot be compared.

Everyone has predicted for months it will beat Avatar to do this will likely need to beat Furious 7 box office in China opening January 9th; Star Wars films are unknown to Chinese audiences having been banned for many years had their first official screenings in June this year. Disney are heavily promoting it in China having its premiere yesterday in Shanghai.

2. Paramount Pictures Daddy’s Home opened with $38.8m; received B+ CinemaScore

3. 20th Century Fox’s Joy opened with $17.5m; received B+ CinemaScore

4. Universal’s Sisters dropped only 0.3% in its second weekend taking $13.8m and $37.1m total.

5. 20th Century Fox’s Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip dropped 11.1% in its second weekend and $39.3m total.

6. Sony’s Concussion opened with disappointing $11m; received A CinemaScore

7. Paramount Pictures The Big Short expanded from 8 screens to 1,585 screens up 2,681% taking $10.5m and $16.1m total in a busy weekend of new releases; received A- CinemaScore.

8. Warner Bros Pointbreak opened an unexpectedly low $10.2m after so much negativity surrounding its release; received B CinemaScore

9. Lionsgate’s The Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 2 dropped 10.1% $5.3m with total $264.3m.

10. Warner Bros Creed down 8.2% took $4.6m with total $96.3m

Opened on limited released

Weinstein’s The Hateful Eight just missed out on the top 10 with its 70mm roadshow in 100 screens taking $4.5m expands into 1,700 screens on Friday.

20th Century Fox The Revenant opened in 4 screens with $471,000 expands wide January 8th.

On limited released

The Danish Girl –Focus – added 359 screens increased 174% $1.5m from 440 screens $3,201,805.

Carol – Weinstein Co – added 164 screens up 362.9% $1,070,000 from 180 screens $ 2,854,311.

Legend –Universal – dropped 66 screens down 81.7% $23,676 from 19 screens total $1,832,670.

Youth – Searchlight – added 88 screens down 43.1% $345,000 from 149 screens and $1,000,515.

Son of Saul – Sony Pictures Classics – added 1 screen dropping 12.1% $33,302 and $97,186.