The winner
When it comes to developing female action stars, Hollywood's patchy track record suggests studios are easily discouraged. Angelina Jolie, who starred in two Tomb Raider films, Wanted and Salt, has long been viewed as pretty much the only bankable female action star in town. But Halle Berry, Charlize Theron and Jennifer Garner have been less fortunate, with their respective vehicles – Catwoman, Aeon Flux and Elektra – branded disappointments. Milla Jovovich is considered reliable box-office only in the Resident Evil movies. Hollywood's reverse strategy – taking a woman with action bona fides and teaching her to act – has yet to yield a star as big as the male equivalent, Dwayne Johnson: Gina Carano has been little seen since Haywire, and Ronda Rousey perhaps didn't get the major launch envisaged from The Expendables 3.
All of the above means that very close attention is being paid to the performance of Lucy, which gives Scarlett Johansson her first big action lead role following supporting turns as Black Widow in Avengers Assemble and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. And the news is very good for Johansson and everyone in Hollywood invested in building a new female action star to place alongside Jolie.
Luc Besson's Lucy has already kicked a fair amount of box-office ass in the US ($114m – £69m – so far) and is performing well in France, Germany and Australia. Now it opens in the UK with a muscular £3.08m – £4.17m, if takings on bank holiday Monday are included – easily the biggest debut for a film top-lined by Johansson (not that there have been too many of those). Three other major new movies were released on 300-plus screens at the weekend, and none of them made it past £700,000 over the Friday-to-Sunday period.
The runner-up
Having fallen 46% the previous weekend, The Inbetweeners 2 drops another 45% on its third weekend of play, taking the 19-day tally to £27.63m. The original Inbetweeners movie stood at £34.99m at the same stage of its run, so the sequel – released a week earlier in the calendar year than the original – is running 21% behind the pace of its predecessor. The Inbetweeners 2 will benefit from those extra days of play before teens return to schools and colleges. The film has now overtaken X-Men: Days of Future Past to become the second-biggest hit of the summer, behind Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (£30.99m). Apes is the only 2014 summer hit so far to crack £30m, unlike last year, when Despicable Me 2 (£47.44m), Iron Man 3 (£36.97m) and Monsters University (£30.64m) all broke that mark. Man of Steel (£29.95m) came very close.
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The mid-table newbies
Thanks to previews, the other three widely distributed releases land respectably in fourth, fifth and sixth place. Best of the bunch is tornado-chasing disaster flick Into the Storm, with £1.15m, ahead of Eric Bana exorcism horror Deliver Us from Evil (£630,000) and Daniel Radcliffe romcom What If (£593,000). Strip out the previews, however, and it all looks a lot less impressive: the numbers for the Friday-to-Sunday period drop, respectively, to £679,000, £407,000 and £336,000. The latter figure is low enough to push What If out of the top 10.
Looking at the above numbers, Warners should be reasonably happy with the result for a disaster movie that lacks marquee names and, thanks to ever-cheaper CGI, probably wasn't too expensive to make. With Deliver Us from Evil, Sony perhaps struggled to put a distinct spin on its property, following a run of films featuring evil spirits, from Insidious (debut of £1.44m) to The Last Exorcism (£1.10m) and The Conjuring (£2.16m). As for What If, while the film was released as a quirky indie in the US, where it has grossed $2.22m to date, in the UK there has been a more aggressive rollout, with local distributor eOne exploiting the cachet of homegrown star Radcliffe. The numbers suggest that the search for the next Hugh Grant continues.
Incidentally, Sin City: A Dame to Kill for played in just two cinemas over the official weekend period, grossing £12,100 before expanding nationwide on bank holiday Monday, when it took a reported £223,000.
The arthouse saviour
For a triumphant six weeks, no new film seemed to offer Richard Linklater's Boyhood much competition in the arthouse space. Now, finally, a new release has emerged to knock it off its pedestal – and it comes from the perhaps unlikely source of Belgian social realists the Dardenne brothers. Until a couple of years ago, the Dardennes' biggest opening in the UK was their 2006 offering The Child, which took a meagre £20,400 from 10 screens. Then came The Kid with a Bike, which began with £74,000 from 31 cinemas: a big step forward in terms of the ambition of the release and the achieved result.
Now comes Two Days, One Night, and it's another huge leap for the Dardennes, commercially speaking: £165,000 from 54 cinemas, including previews of £5,700. The rainy bank holiday Monday delivered a further £81,000, taking the four-day total to £246,000. The combination of five-star reviews and arthouse star Marion Cotillard has clearly proved a commercial winner.
The film's arrival meant a 42% drop for Boyhood, its biggest fall to date. But with the gross so far at £2.63m, distributor Universal will be sanguine, and things could pick up next January with major awards nominations, although the DVD will also be on sale by then.
The event
In the event-cinema sector, Doctor Who: Deep Breath made a splashy landing with £523,000 from its single showing on Saturday. While that's impressive for a television programme that was simultaneously available for free in viewers' homes, it is a significant dip from Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor last November, which grossed £1.80m. The first full episode featuring Peter Capaldi as the Doctor (he appeared briefly in The Day of the Doctor and was in the Christmas episode The Time of the Doctor) evidently didn't register with fans as a comparable event.
Also in this alternative content sector, Secret Cinema's Back to the Future continues its triumphant run, dipping just 2%. The cumulative total is now £2.82m, although that does not include the extra show that was added for bank holiday Monday.
The future
Overall box office was 1% up on the previous weekend and dead level with the equivalent frame from 2013, when Elysium and We're the Millers were the top new arrivals. The summer calendar offers one final weekend session, and again it's a highly varied mix of titles grabbing space now that the blockbusters have had their run. Fox will be hoping that Let's Be Cops can follow the success of previous late-August comedy hits such as Knocked Up and Dodgeball. Then there's young-adult novel adaptation If I Stay, already a hit in the US. As Above, So Below, set in the Paris catacombs, should scoop up younger genre fans, while older audiences could be drawn to traditional heartwarmer The Grand Seduction. True sports tale The Million Dollar Arm, starring John Hamm, also benefits from a feelgood glow. Alternatives include Scandi noir The Keeper of Lost Causes, US indie comedy Obvious Child, Kelly Reichardt's Night Moves with Jesse Eisenberg and Dakota Fanning, and UK urban thriller The Guvnors. It's hard to envisage all these titles connecting with audiences, so expect casualties.
Top 10 films, 22-24 August
1. Lucy, £3,076,997 from 486 sites (new)
2. The Inbetweeners 2, £2,366,161 from 515 sites. Total: £27,631,404
3. Guardians of the Galaxy, £1,259,998 from 497 sites. Total: £21,895,128
4. Into the Storm, £1,147,657 from 431 sites (new)
5. Deliver Us from Evil, £629,554 from 304 sites (new)
6. What If, £592,501 from 374 sites (new)
7. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, £588,994 from 406 sites. Total: £30,987,705
8. Doctor Who: Deep Breath, £522,908 from 468 sites (new)
9. Secret Cinema: Back to the Future, £520,187 from 1 site. Total: £2,818,846
10. The Expendables 3, £511,168 from 467 sites. Total: £3,111,722
Other openers
Two Days, One Night, £165,278 (inc £5,738 previews) from 54 sites
God Help the Girl, £119,460 (inc £111,790 previews) from 11 sites
Thomas and Friends: Tale of the Brave, £60,238 from 82 sites
Mardaani, £46,529 from 26 sites
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, £12,117 from two sites
Sin City, £10,244 from 14 sites (rerelease)
Charulata, £6,632 from five sites
Aindhaam Thalaimurai Sidha Vaidhiya Sigamani, £4,355 from five sites
The Art Party, £2,600 from 6 sites
Angels Vs Bullies, £1,396 from one site
The Notorious Mr Bout, £488 from one site
Police Officer's Wife, £157 from two sites
The Last Showing, £96 from seven sites
Thanks to Rentrak
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