The winner
Fresh combatants are joining the battle for the festive family audience in the shape of Penguins of Madagascar and Get Santa – but nothing could dislodge Paddington bear from the box-office podium. Paddington dropped a slim 25% on its second weekend, adding £3.84m for a 10-day tally of £10.33m. That puts it neck-and-neck with the pace set a year ago by the Disney animation Frozen, which stood at £10.30m at the same stage of its run.
Although Frozen feels season specific, it wasn’t exactly Christmas-themed and continued to play robustly after Boxing Day. Paddington is in the same boat, and so can play through New Year’s Day to the end of the school holiday and beyond.
In contrast, Nativity 3: Dude, Where’s My Donkey?! (£5.25m so far) and Get Santa (debut of £577,000) should see quick declines after Christmas Day. Home-grown family films for the festive season are fairly rare, so Get Santa is unlucky to be competing with two of them (Paddington and Nativity 3) as well as DreamWorks’ brand-established Penguins of Madagascar (debut of £1.58m) and rereleases of Frozen and The Polar Express.
Paddington was always going to be tough competition, but Get Santa’s backers may not have appreciated quite how tough. At least their film has a strong trailer opportunity, if distributor Warners can persuade cinemas to run the Get Santa clip at Paddington screenings.
Despite the popularity of the penguin characters in Madagascar, the spinoff has not performed at the level set by the original franchise. Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted debuted in October 2012 with £6.03m, including £2.39m in previews. Universal/Illumination will be paying close attention, since they have their own animated spinoff – Minions – due next summer. They will argue that Minions is a more powerful brand: they haven’t even included the parent franchise Despicable Me in their film’s title.
The runner-up
Falling 54% on its third weekend, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 is declining slightly faster than its 2013 predecessor Catching Fire. After 18 days, it stands at £25.25m, about 4% below Catching Fire at the same stage. Just as its predecessor did, Mockingjay will face tough competition from The Hobbit on its fourth weekend. At its current pace, it looks unlikely to match the year’s top performers The Lego Movie (£34.3m) and The Inbetweeners 2 (£33.4m). Next in the 2014 list comes Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (£32.7m).
The stragglers
Two new films landed at the bottom of the top 10 chart. In ninth place, St Vincent achieved £389,000 from 312 cinemas, for a £1,247 average. The entertaining intergenerational buddy flick boasts an appealing cast – Bill Murray, Melissa McCarthy, Naomi Watts, Chris O’Dowd – and enjoys a warm 7.4/10 IMDb user rating. But it possibly struggled to define its audience, which can often be a challenge when a main character is a child (played by 11-year-old Jaeden Lieberher) but the film doesn’t have a family skew.
And in 10th place, submarine thriller Black Sea limped in with £246,000 from 314 cinemas, yielding an average of £784. It’s questionable whether lead actor Jude Law was a good choice for the genre audience – and you have to wonder if less divisive options – perhaps Tom Hardy or Michael Fassbender – were also considered for the role. To succeed in today’s marketplace, films have to be first choice for an audience, and Black Sea struggled to establish itself in this vital category. Law and director Kevin Macdonald conferred some arthouse credentials, as did a supporting cast including the well-regarded Ben Mendelsohn, but the audience for quality adult fare has already been well and truly seduced by Benedict Cumberbatch in The Imitation Game (£11.27m and counting).
St Vincent and Black Sea represent triumphs when placed next to Jason Reitman’s Men, Women and Children. The film has been saddled with negative buzz ever since its premiere in September at the Toronto film festival. Pretty typical was Variety’s verdict: “This painfully well-meaning but largely unpersuasive bid for cross-generational understanding feels at once of-the-moment and too obvious by half.” This kind of post-Crash ensemble drama won’t work without strong support from critics, as Paul Haggis discovered recently with his own Third Person. Men, Women and Children opened in 14th place with £73,000 from 212 cinemas, translating to a £346 average.
Also landing outside the top 10, genre flick The Pyramid managed an uninspiring £190,000 from 251 screens, which converts to a £757 average. Distributors may disagree, but it does feel as if two or three less appealing films have been slipped out on a quiet weekend between Paddington and the final instalment of The Hobbit.
The theatre event
As event cinema burgeons, the question of whether the event needs to be happening live remains a hot topic. The appetite for encore screenings suggests that the live element is not crucial – although it does add excitement for many audience members. In the case of The Crucible, starring Richard Armitage (The Hobbit) at London’s Old Vic theatre, this was a case of a filmed play, which was then presented in cinemas on 4 December. Including encore screenings at the weekend, The Crucible has registered with £347,000 in the official Rentrak chart. Distributor CinemaLive puts the total so far as £376,000, including further encores on 8 December. CinemaLive believes this is a record gross for a filmed play in UK cinemas. The number is dwarfed by grosses for live theatre events in cinemas: the National Theatre’s War Horse stands at £2.7m, including encore screenings.
The Bristol Hippodrome’s Dick Whittington, starring Ashleigh and Pudsey the dog, didn’t prove very enticing to cinemagoers, with £8,100 in box office from 69 venues. Maybe the audience-participation nature of pantomimes makes them a poor fit for cinema transmission. Poor Pudsey hasn’t had much luck in cinemas this year. Pudsey the Dog: The Movie limped in with £1.77m in the summer.
The future
Despite a rather commercially lacklustre set of new releases, a strong hold for Paddington means that takings are 9% up on the equivalent frame from 2013, when Frozen landed at the top spot. Cinemas can look forward to even better news this weekend, with the arrival of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. Even if reviews turn out to be mixed, fans will want to see the final instalment of Peter Jackson’s generously proportioned Middle-earth saga. Alternatives include Disney’s Tinker Bell and the Legend of the Neverbeast – further expanding the choice for families with young children. The third Night at the Museum lands on December 19, and then Annie on Boxing Day.
Top 10 films 5-7 December
1. Paddington, £3,837,885 from 540 sites. Total: £10,332,911
2. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, £2,249,045 from 530 sites. Total: £25,248,214
3. Penguins of Madagascar, £1,575,949 from 494 sites (new)
4. The Imitation Game, £874,620 from 488 sites. Total: £11,266,821
5. Horrible Bosses 2, £642,627 from 435 sites. Total: £2,632,333
6. Interstellar, £610,289 from 348 sites. Total: £19,150,662
7. Get Santa, £576,722 from 418 sites (new)
8. Nativity 3: Dude, Where’s My Donkey?!, £453,261 from 451 sites. Total: £5,246,600
9. St Vincent, £389,136 from 312 sites (new)
10. Black Sea, £246,309 from 314 sites (new)
Other openers
The Pyramid, £190,049 from 251 sites
The Crucible – The Old Vic, £126,231 from 211 sites (£346,818 including Thursday takings)
Men, Women and Children, £73,393 from 212 sites
Action Jackson, £54,648 from 38 sites
The Grandmaster, £47,294 from 53 sites
Dick Whittington, £8,118 from 69 sites
Eastern Boys, £3,924 from 5 sites
Me, Myself and Mum, £2,554 from 2 sites
Open Bethlehem, £2,389 from 4 sites
Bonobo, £1,960 from 2 sites
School of Babel, £1,924 from 5 sites
Iyobinte Pusthakam, £1,355 from 7 sites
Mea Culpa, £302 from 1 site
Hello Carter, £294 from 1 site
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