Straight Outta Compton is streets ahead at the UK box office
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Version 0 of 1. The winner: Straight Outta Compton Shrugging off the challenge of new releases led by Owen Wilson thriller No Escape, Straight Outta Compton held on to the top spot in the UK, with a decline from the previous frame of 45%. After 10 days, the NWA biopic has grossed a solid £5.81m. Related: Straight Outta Compton: hit biopic raps up NWA story cleanly Obvious comparison points for Straight Outta Compton are Notorious (about Biggie Smalls) and Get Rich or Die Tryin’ (starring 50 Cent). Notorious maxed out in the UK with £2.81m in 2009, while Get Rich managed £2.03m in 2006. The industry rule of thumb, whereby a film in the UK will gross one 10th of the US number, but with the $ sign switched to £, tends not to work out in the case of films where the majority of cast members are black. Films starring Tyler Perry are an extreme example of this trend, and many were not released theatrically in the UK. Think Like a Man, featuring an ensemble cast led by Kevin Hart, grossed $92m in the US, indicating a UK gross just over £9m, whereas the actual achieved result was £664,000. In this context, both Notorious ($36.8m in the US) and Get Rich ($31.0m in the US) actually held up pretty well in the UK. Straight Outta Compton has grossed a whopping $150m in the US, after four weeks of play. That would indicate a UK gross of £15m, which, frankly, nobody is or was expecting. The runner-up: Inside Out Now in its seventh week of release, Pixar’s Inside Out holds steady at No 2 in the chart, a position it has occupied for the past month. As a point of comparison, this year’s top movie Jurassic World only managed three weeks in the top two places of the chart – released at a more competitive time, of course, with the likes of Minions and Ant-Man arriving in its slipstream. The last time a film was so highly placed so deep into its run was back in December 2012, with Skyfall. Inside Out has now grossed just over £36m, which puts it ahead of Up (£34.7m) in the all-time Pixar league table (not adjusted for inflation). Next in its sights: Finding Nemo, with £37.5m plus £1.2m for the 3D rerelease. Higher still are Monsters, Inc, Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3. Inside Out enjoyed the smallest drop of any film in the top 10 (down 39% from the previous frame). All films were hit on Sunday by sunny weather, which dampened grosses across the market. Overall, the market is showing a relative lack of disparity, with the top film grossing just 4.6 times the 10th-placed film, and a crowded field of 11 titles all earning £200,000-£400,000 at the weekend. As recently as early July, we saw a session where the top film (Minions) grossed 93 times the weekend takings of the film in 10th place. The new contenders The Friday after the August bank holiday has often proved a relatively soft date in the release calendar: a limbo land between the summer and the launch of autumn’s prestige titles. A year ago, films such as Let’s Be Cops, If I Stay, Sex Tape and Before I Go to Sleep all came out around this time. This year, we have No Escape, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, The Transporter Refuelled, American Ultra and Ricki and the Flash. Released on a combined 1,900-plus screens, the five films grossed a combined £1.99m (including previews of £117,000), delivering a weak overall site average of just over £1,000. Of the five titles, Americans-in-peril thriller No Escape did best, benefiting from a clear genre positioning. The film’s IMDb user rating of 7.0/10 is nearly double its MetaCritic score of 38/100. An opening gross of £638,000 including previews of £32,000 is hardly a triumph, but distributor eOne will be happy to have done better than the rival new releases. Achieving the lowest screen average of the quintet (£616) as well as the lowest weekend gross (£220,000) is Ricki and the Flash. Marketable elements included director Jonathan Demme, writer Diablo Cody and star Meryl Streep, but these assets perhaps didn’t triangulate very successfully. Streep fans, who have enjoyed her in recent years as a nun, celebrity chef, English prime minister, pill-popping southern matriarch and singing witch, proved predictably less enticed by her as a washed-up LA bar-band rocker. In the case of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, previews of £85,000 have pushed it several places up the chart, leapfrogging American Ultra, The Transporter Refuelled and Pixels, all of which actually grossed more over the three-day weekend period. The £20m hit: Mission Impossible Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation has just cracked £20m, the first film in the M:I franchise to do so. All four of the previous films in the series landed in the £15m-£19m range, with the first Mission: Impossible (1996) best, with £18.65m. Globally, Rogue Nation has cracked $500m, with China, where it opened today (8 September), still to come. The arthouse hit: 45 Years Although not in the box-office top 10, 45 Years is doing very nicely at No 13 in the chart. Having debuted the previous weekend with £309,000 plus £22,000 in previews, the British drama now falls 31%, for a 10-day total of £917,000. A modest expansion from 68 to 89 cinemas helped the film hold up at the box office. For comparison, director Andrew Haigh’s last film Weekend reached £222,000 in the UK. Very strong reviews, growing admiration for Haigh and acclaim for lead actors Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay are all factors in the success of 45 Years, which is the biggest-grossing and widest-playing film ever released synchronously in cinemas and on the Curzon Home Cinema premium VOD platform. The future Overall, UK cinemas achieved their second worst result of the past year, bettering only the feeble session in mid March, when Run All Night and Suite Française were the top new releases. Cinemas are crying out for fresh commercially potent product, and bookers will be pinning hopes on Legend, starring a double dose of Tom Hardy, arriving on 9 September. YA sequel The Maze Runner: Scorch Trials, landing on Thursday, should also help bring some life to the market. The Visit, which sees M Night Shyamalan teaming up with producer Jason Blum and returning to his genre roots, is also in the mix, as is Woody Allen’s Irrational Man. Top 10 films 4-6 September 1. Straight Outta Compton, £1,366,741 from 456 sites. Total: £5,807,566 2. Inside Out, £731,291 from 564 sites. Total: £36,024,571 3. No Escape, £637,630 from 427 sites (new) 4. Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, £509,849 from 360 sites. Total: £20,105,197 5. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, £431,726 from 432 sites (new) 6. Pixels, £394,154 from 486 sites. Total: £7,575,970 7. The Transporter Refuelled, £352,278 from 377 sites (new) 8. American Ultra, £347,401 from 325 sites (new) 9. The Man from UNCLE, £325,625 from 323 sites. Total: £5,958,355 10. Hitman: Agent 47, £295,316 from 453 sites. Total: £1,923,261 Other openers Ricki and the Flash, £220,032 from 357 sites Welcome Back, £210,772 from 74 sites The Second Mother, £41,966 (including £27,136 previews) from 12 sites Dope, £39,787 (including £1,532 previews) from 102 sites Cartel Land, £24,478 (including £4,021 previews) from 27 sites Paayum Pali, £13,732 from 21 sites Miss Julie, £5,680 (including £2,096 previews) from 17 sites (£7,094 including Ireland, opened August 29) When Love Happens, £4,984 from five sites Buttercup Bill, £4,442 (including £2,493 previews) from eight sites Closed Curtain, £2,164 (including £204 previews) from seven sites Bait, no data available Bronson (rerelease), no data available • Thanks to Rentrak |