Hot Pursuit goes tepid as Mission: Impossible tops UK box office
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Version 0 of 1. The winner: Tom Cruise Related: Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation review – functional old-school action thriller There has been plenty of speculation that, nearly three decades after Top Gun propelled him to the top of the A-list, Tom Cruise has lost his box-office potency. Commercial returns for his recent movies Edge of Tomorrow, Oblivion and Jack Reacher were all soft, and his star presence didn’t seem to do much for musical Rock of Ages. So the prophets of doom will all be pausing to reflect now that Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation has begun with a sturdy £4.33m plus £1.02m in Thursday previews. Those numbers are hardly a franchise best, but they are roughly equivalent to previous entries. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol debuted right at the end of 2011, with £2.71m plus hefty previews of £5.48m, giving a seven-day opening of £8.19m. The differences in the release strategies make it difficult to draw direct comparisons between the initial performances of the two films. A more apt comparison is Mission: Impossible 3, which kicked off in May 2006 with £4.76m plus £614,000 in previews. Rogue Nation achieved similar numbers, although of course benefits from significant ticket price inflation in the intervening nine years. Outside of Mission: Impossible, Cruise’s last film, Edge of Tomorrow, began with £1.89m in May 2014, on its way to a flat £7.89m lifetime total. Given the creative strength of the film, many wondered whether a different actor could have pushed it to a higher number. That debate will continue, but as far as Paramount’s Mission: Impossible franchise goes, audiences are exhibiting an enduring affection for Cruise in the Ethan Hunt role. The runner-up: Pixar Suffering a drop of 52%, Pixar’s Inside Out earned £3.57m in its second frame, falling to second place. While that sounds a hefty tumble, it’s worth considering that the weather at the weekend was significantly sunnier than the previous rainy session, and most films fell by at least 50%. The number to keep an eye on is Inside Out’s 10-day total of £16.97m. That’s ahead of the lifetime totals of Pixar’s two weakest UK hits – Cars and Cars 2. After 10 days, Pixar’s last effort, Monsters University, stood at £8.63m, and Inside Out is nearly double that amount. The year before, Brave stood at £13.26m after two weekends of play, but an unusual rollout strategy means that this was in fact a 14-day figure in England and Wales, and a 24-day figure in the rest of the UK and Ireland. In any case, Inside Out is well ahead of that number. A valid comparison for Inside Out is 2009’s Up, which stood at £13.92m after two weekends of play, on its way to a final tally of £34.6m. Disney Pixar will be hoping to push Inside Out to similar levels. However, Minions, from rival studio Universal Illumination, has already crossed the £40m barrier, with a sixth consecutive weekend at £1m-plus. The nice hold: Southpaw Related: Jake Gyllenhaal: ‘I’m fascinated by my own anger’ Apart from Secret Cinema’s The Empire Strikes Back, the only film continuing in the top 10 with a drop of less than 50% from the previous frame is Southpaw. The Jake Gyllenhaal boxing drama dropped a comparatively slim 32% despite the largely warm, dry weather that hampered the weekend box-office. Distributor Entertainment Films continues to support it with highly visible marketing, presumably encouraged by audience enthusiasm for the film. Southpaw has reached £4.04m after 10 days, and looks on course to become one of Gyllenhaal’s biggest UK hits. The flop: Hot Pursuit On paper, teaming up Reese Witherspoon and Modern Family’s Sofía Vergara in an action comedy looked a nice package. But after Hot Pursuit under-performed in the US earlier this summer, distributor Warner Bros was probably never going to bet the farm by pushing the film in the UK. A tepid £312,000 opening gross resulted, yielding a site average below £1,000. Audiences are so far rating the film a poor 4.9/10 at IMDb, with critics predictably offering an even harsher 31/100 score at Metacritic. Witherspoon’s last comedy, This Means War, kicked off with £1.52m plus £300,000 in previews back in March 2012. That film benefited from a starrier line-up that also including Tom Hardy and Chris Pine. But even How Do You Know, a 2011 Witherspoon romcom flop that faced the hurdle here of a US sports setting, opened bigger than Hot Pursuit, with £375,000 from 211 cinemas, and a £1,777 average. The micro release: The Cobbler Delivering one of the weakest openings of Adam Sandler’s career, The Cobbler has debuted with a dismal £57,800. However, given the scale of release – it played at the weekend in just 22 cinemas – that number at least delivers a decent average of £2,627. The Cobbler, in which Sandler experiences the lives of his customers by walking in their shoes, is currently playing in 20 Showcase cinemas, daytime screenings only. It may have benefited from more generous programming at the weekend. By swerving the Vue, Cineworld and Odeon chains, The Cobbler can be released on to DVD and VOD without waiting out the standard 16.5-week theatrical window that the bigger multiplex chains demand in the UK. The release is so tiny, that comparisons with past Sandler films are pretty meaningless. However, his last comedy, Blended, kicked off with £689,000 from 388 cinemas in May 2014. The Bollywood hit With £2.17m after 17 days of release, Bajrangi Bhaijaan is the first Bollywood movie to crack £2m in the UK since PK back in January. The challenge for distributor Eros is now to push the film up to the level of Dhoom 3, which managed £2.71m in December 2013. Bajrangi Bhaijaan, starring Salman Khan and Kareena Kapoor, enjoys a strong 8.4/10 user rating at IMDb. The future Related: The Diary Of A Teenage Girl: ‘a more realistic view of women and sex’ Despite the arrival of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, takings overall are 19% down on the previous frame, and 8% adrift from the equivalent weekend in 2014, when Guardians of the Galaxy arrived at the top of the chart. For the coming frame, cinemas have no hope of matching the 2014 equivalent, which saw the arrival of The Inbetweeners 2. Still, they will be pinning hopes for a decent result from Fox/Marvel’s Fantastic Four reboot, plus The Gift, the latest from prolific genre producer Jason Blum. Alternatives include Diary of a Teenage Girl, a coming-of-age tale controversially saddled with an 18 certificate by the UK censor; dog adventure Max; Al Pacino in David Gordon Green’s Manglehorn, and Spanish cop thriller Marshland. Top 10 films 31 July–2 August 1. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, £5,351,344 from 572 sites (new)2. Inside Out, £3,574,424 from 621 sites. Total: £16,966,7993. Southpaw, £1,129,608 from 409 sites. Total: £4,036,9874. Ant-Man, £1,126,080 from 519 sites. Total: £12,760,0155. Minions, £1,007,186 from 580 sites. Total: £40,042,3236. Jurassic World, £455,645 from 402 sites. Total: £62,711,6617. Hot Pursuit, £311,673 from 328 sites (new)8. Secret Cinema: The Empire Strikes Back, £295,275 from 1 site. Total: £3,396,7159. Ted 2, £285,385 from 365 sites. Total: £9,548,53310. Bajrangi Bhaijaan, £191,612 from 63 sites. Total: £2,166,328 Other openers The Cobbler, £57,787 from 22 sitesDrishyam, £50,733 from 27 sitesIris, £41,061 (including £10,629 previews) from 24 sitesAngrej, £32,069 from 8 sitesSakalakala Vallavan Appatakkar, £11,088 from 11 sitesMan with a Movie Camera, £6,504 (including £434 previews) from 9 sites Orange Mittai, £2,789 from 4 sitesBeyond the Reach, £2,032 from 17 sitesDoctor Proctor’s Fart Powder, £1,439 from 12 sitesAazaadi, £1,068 from 3 sitesCub, £868 from 2 sitesDestiny, £288 from 1 site Thanks to Rentrak |