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Crowded market … Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen and Liam Hemsworth, foreground, as Gale Hawthorne in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2.
Crowded market … Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen and Liam Hemsworth, foreground, as Gale Hawthorne in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2. Photograph: Murray Close/AP
Crowded market … Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen and Liam Hemsworth, foreground, as Gale Hawthorne in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2. Photograph: Murray Close/AP

Katniss off target as Mockingjay – Part 2 trails Part 1 at UK box office

This article is more than 8 years old

Hunger Games finale’s £11.3m opening fails to match its predecessor’s, as Spectre rockets to third place in all-time UK chart

Numbers soften for Hunger Games finale

When the makers of the Harry Potter and Twilight films split the last book of each series into two movies, both saw a box office uptick for the finale. It was reasonable to assume that Hunger Games would follow the same pattern, with Mockingjay – Part 2 delivering a bigger opening than its predecessor. It didn’t happen.

The final Hunger Games film opened with £9.26m plus just under £2m in previews, for an £11.26m total. That compares with Mockingjay – Part 1’s £10.32m plus £2.33m in previews for a four-day total of £12.65m. In other words, the second instalment is 11% down on its predecessor.

The Hunger Games - Mockingjay, Part 2 - video review Guardian

Part 1 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows debuted with £18.32m and Part 2 with £23.75m, an increase of 30%. Meanwhile, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1 began with £13.91m and Part 2 with £15.85m, an uptick of 14%.

Mockingjay - Part 2 might have dipped because Part 1 was arguably a water-treading exercise that eroded the fanbase. But the same could be said about Twilight: Breaking Dawn, the first part of which was rather uneventful. That didn’t stop fans turning up in droves for the finale.

Another theory is that, with the addition of the Divergent and Maze Runner franchises – both delivered sequels in 2015 – the dystopian-future YA space has become too cluttered. It may also be that occasional cinemagoers have seen Spectre, booked for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and decided that’s enough for now.

Viewed in a broader context, £11.24m in four days is still a tidy sum for Mockingjay – Part 2. While it was beaten this year by the debuts of Fifty Shades of Grey, Fast & Furious 7, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Jurassic World, Minions and Spectre, it’s worth remembering that 2015 has been an exceptionally strong year for blockbusters. Last year, ignoring previews, only one film opened bigger than Mockingjay – Part 2 and that was Mockingjay – Part 1.

Spectre - video review Guardian

Spectre suffers big drop

Having dropped by 34% and 40% in its second and third sessions, Spectre suffered its biggest fall to date, down 51%. Sony shouldn’t be too worried: Skyfall experienced a similarly hefty dip (down 47%) in its fourth frame, when it faced competition from the final Twilight film.

The arrival of Mockingjay – Part 2 has had a comparable effect on Spectre. After 28 days of release, Spectre stands at £84.3m. Skyfall had reached £85.8m at the same stage of its runand went on to add another £17m, pushing it to almost £103m. That was an exceptionally long tail for a film that pulled in a number of extremely infrequent cinema-goers by the end of its run. It remains to be seen whether Spectre has the same staying power. Competition for the older male audience hots up this week with the arrival of Black Mass and especially Bridge of Spies.

Spectre has now overtaken Titanic (£80.1m, including the 3D rerelease) to become the third-biggest film ever at the UK box office, after Skyfall and Avatar (£94.0m). The big questions now are: can it match Skyfall? Will it crack £100m? And will it beat Avatar?

The Lady in the Van – video review Guardian

Maggie Smith has staying power

Delivering the strongest hold of any film in the top 10 (down just 29%), The Lady in the Van was laregly unaffected by the arrival of Katniss and co. After 10 days, the Maggie Smith comedy has pulled in £6.44m at the UK box office. Weekday business has been especially robust, unsurprising for this older-skewing title. The History Boys – the last film adaptation of an Alan Bennett stageplay – managed £4.34m over the course of its entire run. Many of that film’s cast, notably James Corden, Dominic Cooper and Russell Tovey, appear in cameos in The Lady in the Van.

The Dressmaker - video review Guardian

The other Liam Hemsworth film

Given that the cast of The Dressmaker includes Kate Winslet and Liam Hemsworth, a debut of £236,000 from 202 cinemas might be considered disappointing. On the other hand, the planets did not look well aligned for this title from the start. The first film in 18 years by Australian director Jocelyn Moorhouse (Proof) offers an unusual mix of mystery, romance, family drama and broad satirical comedy. Hemsworth, despite Hunger Games currency, probably isn’t that meaningful to the likely audience for The Dressmaker. It was down to Winslet to do all the heavy lifting.

The flop

Despite a marketing campaign including illuminated posters on the London Underground, heist thriller Momentum, starring Olga Kurylenko, James Purefoy and Morgan Freeman, failed to engage the interest of cinemagoers. The film delivered box office of £46 from 10 cinemas, which is surely less than one ticket per venue. The film is also available on digital download from Sky Store, and presumably it is on this platform that audiences are finding the film. MetaCritic score is a discouraging 18/100.

The Shakespeare smackdown

Ever since its live debut in cinemas on 15 October, the Barbican’s presentation of Hamlet, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, has been giving Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth film, starring Michael Fassbender, a run for its money. Macbeth is still playing cinemas, and encore screenings of NT Live’s Hamlet continue to push up the event’s cinema gross. Now, for the first time, Hamlet has overtaken Macbeth, with £2.806m against £2.803m. It’s fair to say that production costs for the filmed Hamlet – a stage play that was in any case running at the Barbican, London – are significantly cheaper. Macbeth may prove richer in international box office and ancillary home entertainment revenues.

NT Live’s presentation of Broadway show Of Mice and Men, starring James Franco and Chris O’Dowd, was beamed into UK cinemas for the first time on Thursday, having previously played to cinemas in 2014 in other countries including Ireland. Gross for the pre-filmed event was £834,000, including weekend encores. Data gatherer Rentrak includes UK and Ireland as one combined territory, and the total to date for the region is £847,000.

Admissions update

Admissions numbers – that’s bums on seats – are in for October and they show an uptick of 16% from the same month in 2014, and 30% up on October 2013. Overall, for the first 10 months of the year, 2015 is tracking 8% ahead of 2014 for admissions. If that trend continues, 2015 will end up with just over 170m admissions, putting it just below 2012 (the year of Skyfall, with 172.5m), and 2011 (171.6m). OWith Star Wars: The Force Awakens landing on 17 December, cinema owners are hoping that admissions will exceed those 2011 and 2012 totals. In terms of actual box office, which benefits from annual ticket price inflation, 2015 looks pretty certain to be a record year.

The future

Thanks to the arrival of Mockingjay – Part 2, box office overall is 25% up on the previous frame. However, takings are 5% down on the equivalent session from a year ago, when Mockingjay – Part 1 led a field that also included The Imitation Game, Interstellar and Nativity 3: Dude, Where’s My Donkey. The coming session looks to offer a few lucrative treats, led by new Pixar animation The Good Dinosaur. Steven Spielberg’s Cold War thriller Bridge of Spies, starring Tom Hanks and Mark Rylance, has a clearly identifiable audience in its sights. Competing will be mobster thriller Black Mass, starring Johnny Depp as Boston gangster Whitey Bulger. Chasing an even more upscale audience is Todd Haynes’ 1950s-set romantic drama Carol, starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara.

Carol: exclusive clip – video Guardian

Top 10 films, 20-22 November

1. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2, £11,255,566 from 576 sites (new)
2. Spectre, £3,821,156 from 607 sites. Total: £84,313,251
3. The Lady in the Van, £1,609,943 from 549 sites. Total: £6,437,140
4. Hotel Transylvania 2, £539,251 from 527 sites. Total: £19,189,306
5. Brooklyn, £409,100 from 373 sites. Total: £3,782,618
6. Steve Jobs, £404,026 from 393 sites. Total: £1,776,129
7. The Dressmaker, £235,968 from 202 sites (new)
8. Pan, £230,282 from 431 sites. Total: £8,694,861
9. Prem Ratan Dhan Payo, £217,514 from 100 sites. Total: £1,392,688
10. The Perfect Guy, £102,924 from 102 sites (new)

Other openers

Lulu – Met Opera, £92,708 from 162 sites
Love, £43,421 (including £31,173 previews) from 13 sites
Our Times, £33,013 from 10 sites
True Romance, £19,066 (including £9,311 previews) from five sites (rerelease)
Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans, £7,311 from 17 sites
My Nazi Legacy, £5,230 from two sites
Pathemari, £3,903 from 10 sites

Why Güeros is the film you should watch this week Guardian

Güeros, £3,709 from six sites
The Crow’s Egg, £2,481 from six sites
Un Homme Ideal, £2,071 from two sites
Star Men, £1,225 from one site
The Russian Woodpecker, £735 from one site
Mr Calzaghe, £731 from three sites
Hand Gestures, £610 from four sites
Momentum, £46 from 10 sites

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