UK box office top ten and analysis for the weekend of Friday 1st – Sunday 3rd June 2012…
Prometheus may not have received an out-of-this-world reception from critics, but that didn’t seem to deter audiences as Ridley Scott’s return to the sci-fi genre opened atop the UK box office chart with £6,236,580. This is the second-biggest opening of the year and also narrowly falls short of a career high for Scott on home soil, just lagging behind the £6.4m pulled in by Hannibal back in 2001. With little in the way of real competition next weekend, the big question now is whether Prometheus can hang on to top spot for a second weekend given the word-of-mouth, which has been mixed at best.
Rounding out a memorable weekend for Charlize Theron was a second-placed opening for the Kristen Stewart / Chris Hemsworth fairytale fantasy Snow White and the Huntsman. While £3,589,027 is a solid enough debut, it’s certainly far from spectacular considering all of the recent fighting talk from KStew’s “very huge strong fanbase,” who couldn’t muster much of a challenge to top spot even with the aid of two extra days of preview screenings. Nevertheless, it was enough (just) to knock Men in Black III down into third, although the sci-fi comedy managed to improve on its £2.9m opening with £3.2m in its second weekend, while Marvel’s The Avengers slipped one place to fourth and Sacha Baron Cohen’s The Dictator fell three spots to fifth.
Shifting to the bottom half of the chart and rom-com What to Expect When You’re Expecting dropped two to sixth with £634k, while ‘worst of the year’ contender Top Cat: The Movie managed to open in seventh place with £457,287, despite universally horrendous reviews. Comedy sequel American Pie: Reunion continues to linger around the chart after five weeks on release as it slips to eighth, while Ken Loach’s The Angels’ Share takes ninth with a debut haul of £256,446 and Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom falls three to round out the chart in tenth.
Number one this time last year: X-Men: First Class
1. Prometheus, £6,236,580 weekend (New)
2. Snow White and the Huntsman, £3,589,027 weekend (New)
3. Men in Black III, £3,032,053 weekend; £7,958,460 total (2 weeks)
4. The Avengers, £847,598 weekend; £48,367,585 total (6 weeks)
5. The Dictator, £754,068 weekend; £9,251,635 total (3 weeks)
6. What to Expect When You’re Expecting, £633,935 weekend; £1,983,332 total (2 weeks)
7. Top Cat: The Movie, £457,287 weekend (New)
8. American Pie: Reunion, £267,682 weekend; £16,396,461 total (5 weeks)
9. The Angels’ Share, £256,446 weekend (New)
10. Moonrise Kingdom, £210,804 weekend; £724,870 total (2 weeks)
Incoming…
Looking to get a head-start on the weekend by opening in UK cinemas yesterday was the George Lucas-produced WWII drama Red Tails (cert. 12A) [read our review here], while Friday sees the release of Simon Pegg’s latest, the dark British comedy A Fantastic Fear of Everything (cert. TBC), along with Will Ferrell’s Spanish language comedy Casa di me Padre (cert. 15), horror The Pact (cert. 15) and British crime thriller Ill Manors (cert. 18), which marks the directorial debut of Plan B, a.k.a. Ben Drew.
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