Tintin scores big in UK to easily claim crown

In the week it was revealed that Paramount is significantly downsizing its international offices, PPI scored another success in the UK with The Adventures of Tintin: Secret Of The Unicorn grossing $10.9m (£6.8m) from 512 screens at an excellent average of $21,257 (£13,201).

The strong opening was PPI’s second-biggest of the year to date in the UK, behind Transformers: Dark Of The Moon.

However, the Steven Spielberg-directed adventure story took $5.3m (£3.3m) from 508 previews, which makes the pure weekend figure of $5.6m (£3.5m) a little less impressive, especially considering it was the only new children’s film playing on the last weekend of half-term.

Paramount scored a one-two at the box office, with Paranormal Activity 3 taking a further $3m (£1.8m) from 415 screens over the Halloween weekend.

Holdovers accounted for positions three-five with Johnny English Reborn, Contagion and The Lion King 3D each grossing more than $1.6m (£1m). Johnny English Reborn dropped only 13% in its fourth week, while Disney will be delighted with 3D rerelease The Lion King, which has now taken $17.8m (£11m) in the same period.

After Tintin, Shah Rukh Khan’s big-budget sci-fi Ra.One was the best of the newcomers, taking impressive numbers for Eros. The film grossed $1.46m (£908,768) from 94 screens at the week’s second-best screen average of $15,568 (£9,668), a total narrowly short of Eros’ previous best of $1.51m (£936,454) from 91 sites for My Name Is Khan in February 2010.

Reportedly the biggest-budget Indian film ever, Ra.One profited from the Diwali holiday and big preview numbers including a major 11-screen premiere at the O2 arena.

Disney’s The Help debuted decently in seventh on $1.4m (£896,597), while eOne’s The Ides Of March made $1.1m (£665,387) from 213 screens, not a bad result considering the screen number but in light of its star power, good reviews and strong numbers for recent high-concept political thrillers such as Tinker Tailor, eOne would have hoped for more.

We Need To Talk About Kevin posted good holdover numbers of $473,828 (£294,248) while Anonymous performed closer to its name than Sony would have liked, with only $294,997 (£183,194) from 214 screens at an average of $1,378 (£856).

This week sees saturation releases for Lionsgate’s Machine Gun Preacher, Sony’s Straw Dogs, Fox’s In Time and Universal’s Tower Heist.