Matt Damon in The Martian — Star turn … The Martian, starring Matt Damon, received £6.53m in its first UK weekend – an almost identical amount to his 2007 film The Bourne Ultimatum. Photograph: Aidan Monaghan/AP

The Martian blasts off with biggest UK box-office opening since July

This article is more than 8 years old

Ridley Scott’s space adventure achieves his biggest ever first weekend in the UK – but for The Intern’s quest for bums on seats, it’s complicated

The winner: The Martian

With £4.90m plus £1.63m in Wednesday and Thursday previews, Ridley Scott’s The Martian delivers the biggest UK opening since Inside Out in July. The success brings cheer to the UK cinema sector, which saw admissions falter in late September. The box office jumped 54% from the previous weekend – and that’s not even including the healthy previews that occurred on Saturday and Sunday for Hotel Transylvania 2.

The £6.53m result is almost identical to Matt Damon’s best ever UK opening, 2007’s The Bourne Ultimatum, which debuted with £6.55m, including previews of £1.24m. Ignoring sequels and supporting roles (such as Ocean’s Eleven and Interstellar), Damon’s previous best debut was 2013’s Elysium, with £3.13m, including £974,000 in previews. The Departed, featuring Damon in a co-lead alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Jack Nicholson, began with £2.30m in 2006.

The Martian – video review Guardian

Director Scott’s last film Exodus: Gods and Kings opened Boxing Day weekend 2014 with £2.61m. Ignoring previews, The Martian delivers Scott’s best opening since Prometheus began in June 2012 with £6.24m. The Martian’s opening was bigger than 2010’s Robin Hood (£5.75m including £1.39m previews), and much bigger than both 2007’s American Gangster (£2.56m) and 2005’s Kingdom of Heaven (£2.53m). In fact, if previews are included in The Martian’s tally, the film has delivered Scott his biggest ever opening, just ahead of Hannibal’s £6.40m in 2001 – albeit not adjusted for inflation.

The Martian’s debut is also highly comparable with Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity, which began in November 2013 with £6.24m including previews of £619,000. Sensational word-of-mouth and awards recognition propelled Gravity to a stunning £32.7m.

The counter-programming alternative

Given Nancy Meyers’ track record of serving mature female audiences with the likes of What Women Want, Something’s Gotta Give and It’s Complicated, releasing her latest film The Intern against The Martian seemed like a smart choice. This time, however, the audience was harder to pinpoint for a workplace comedy starring Anne Hathaway and Robert De Niro as, respectively, the founding chief executive and a “senior” intern at an online fashion retailer.

The Intern – video review Guardian

If the intention was to add the Devil Wears Prada demographic to Meyers’ regular constituency, the achieved result falls short of that ambition. The Intern has opened in the UK with £759,000 from 431 cinemas. That’s less than It’s Complicated’s debut of £1.10m from 434 venues back in January 2010. Before that, The Holiday began with £2.83m including £479,000 in previews back in December 2006.

The arthouse hit: Macbeth

Delivering broad cinema audiences for Shakespeare is a significant challenge, and hits – such as Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet – are rare. In 2012, Ralph Fiennes’s well-regarded Coriolanus ended its run with £901,000, which is below the total achieved by the live relay of Tom Hiddleston in the same role at London’s Donmar Warehouse theatre (£1.22m, including encores). When you consider the cost of film production versus the cost of filming a play that is already running, the economics persuasively favour the latter.

Macbeth - video review Guardian

Pushed aggressively by distributor StudioCanal into 399 cinemas, Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth, starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, begins with a sturdy £747,000 including £13,000 in previews. The screen average may look soft at £1,871, but it’s inevitably dragged down by some weak numbers at regional multiplexes. At arthouse venues such as the Curzon, Picturehouse and Everyman chains, as well as upscale multiplexes, it’s a hit. Next Thursday 15 October, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Hamlet will be beamed into cinemas live from London’s Barbican. It will be fascinating to see how the numbers compare with Macbeth.

The big fallers

Many of the films released the previous weekend suffered pretty calamitous falls. Miss You Already was one of the better performers, down 57%, while 99 Homes did better still with a 52% drop. Serial-killer thriller Solace fell a disturbing 82%, fuelled by a loss of cinemas (332 down to 249) and showtime slots. Anton Corbijn’s Life, starring Robert Pattinson and Dane DeHaan, collapsed by 90%, suggesting that this true story about a Life magazine photographer and James Dean has failed to capture audiences’ imagination as a theatrical proposition.

Life – video review Guardian

The sustained hit: Legend

Passing the £15m barrier on Saturday, Legend now stands at £15.37m, and looks to challenge Mad Max: Fury Road (£17.4m) as Hardy’s biggest ever UK hit in a lead role. The film is also poised to enter the Top 10 18-certificate box-office hits in the UK, currently led by Fifty Shades of Grey. Legend will easily overtake The Imitation Game (£16.4m) to become the second-biggest hit ever for distributor StudioCanal, behind last year’s Paddington.

Legend – video review Guardian

The future

As mentioned above, the box office is up 54% since last week, largely thanks to The Martian. It’s also 3% ahead of the equivalent weekend from 2014, when newcomer Gone Girl topped the chart. Friday sees Robert Zemeckis’s The Walk, already playing on Imax and large-format screens, expand to cinemas nationwide. The day before, Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario, starring Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro, looks to capitalise on very positive reviews for a drug-war thriller set on the US-Mexico border. On Wednesday, Suffragette, starring Carey Mulligan, will be beamed into 25 Cineworld cinemas nationwide from its UK premiere at the London film festival, before its full opening next Monday. Alejandro Amenábar’s Regression, starring Emma Watson and Ethan Hawke, opens this Friday. Alternatives include Cary Fukunaga’s Beasts of No Nation, arriving in Curzon cinemas a week ahead of its Netflix premiere, and the documentaries The Nightmare and Red Army.