Deathly Hallows makes it a hat-trick at competitive UK box office

Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part Two continued to weave its magic at the UK box office, grossing a further £4.6m from 576 locations at a week high screen average of £7,930.

Despite the good weather, the lure of Harry Potter remained strong during the UK’s peak summer holiday period.

With a cumulative of £55.5m, the last in the mega-franchise broke into the top ten all time in the UK, overtaking tenth-placed Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets (£54.8m). The film will surpass ninth-placed Casino Royale this week and should move beyond the third-best in the Ring trilogy The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers this weekend.

Paramount might have hoped for a little more from their latest big-budget comic-book adaptation Captain America: The First Avenger, which took £3m from 470 locations at a good screen average of £6,344, in second place.

With most of the 12-A film’s target demographic now on holiday, the total was decent but far from spectacular, and only £500,000 better than the opening of Warner Bros’ disappointing Green Lantern, let alone the superior debuts of Marvel fare such as Thor (£5.4m) and Iron Man 2 (£7.7m).

Disney’s Cars 2 was the third-best of five films to gross over £1m in the UK, grossing £1.9m over its holdover weekend for an £8.2m total, £700,000 ahead of the 2006 original in its equivalent weekend.

The sequel marginally trumped Vertigo’s Horrid Henry in their respective bids for the youngest cinema-going demographic, but played on 98 more screens than the UK production.

Warner’s fourth-placed Horrible Bosses, the next in a growing line of counter-programming hopefuls, took £1.4m for £5.3m over its second weekend. While the comedy posted a commendable week-on-week decline of only 31%, Seth Gordon’s comedy isn’t inspiring UK audiences to the extent of Universal’s smash Bridesmaids, which is still playing on 396 screens in its sixth week and has now grossed £20.1m.

Vertigo, the only non-studio in the top five, saw success with their fifth-placed family-comedy Horrid Henry: The Movie, which scored a healthy £1.3m from 413 screens at an average of £3,124.

While the film fell short of Vertigo’s summer 2010 hit StreetDance 3D, which took £2.5m on debut, the UK’s first children’s film to be shot entirely in 3D scored well considering its narrow target demographic and competition from Cars 2.

Vertigo producer Rupert Preston told Screen: “We’re very, very happy with the result, particularly as it is essentially a matinee film. Cars 2 was playing in more than 100 screens and it was a hot weekend.

“The ticket breakdown was solid, with one adult attending to 2/3 kids and we were really encouraged by the film’s appeal across the UK, with good numbers at multiplexes in Birmingham, Gateshead, Enfield, Peckham and Streatham among others.”

With deals yet to be reached in the US and some key European territories, Preston is hopeful that the solid UK result will advance the film’s global distribution push. 

Sony’s comedy The Zookeeper was the only other top ten newcomer, entering the chart in sixth on an underwhelming £936,063. The film was never likely to score big in the UK, with audiences less familiar with lead Kevin James, most famous for his role on CBS sitcom The King Of Queens.

The week’s only other top 20 debut came from Optimum’s 13th-placed Japanese anime Arrietty, which took £75,584 on 61 screens.

In what will be another congested weekend, the coming frame sees saturation releases for more high-octane kids’ fare in the shape of Paramount’s Super 8 and family-comedy Mr Popper’s Penguins. Optimum’s Sarah’s Key and Artificial Eye’s The Tree receive limited releases.