To the top of the weekly box office and beyond for Disney’s summer blockbuster which records the biggest UK opening to date in 2010.

Toy Story 3 became the top opener at the UK box office to date in 2010 after a dazzling weekend performance.  The third instalment in the Pixar/Disney franchise took a triumphant $32.8m (£21.2m) from 562 screens, recording a tremendous screen average of $58,300 (£37,700.)  

Disney’s summer tentpole entered at third on the all time UK openers chart, behind Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix and Shrek The Third. With both of those films grossing over $78m (£50.4m) at the UK box office the future looks highly lucrative for Toy Story. Boosted by the extra cost of 3-D tickets (the film opened on 445 3-D screens), four days of previews and a summer holiday slot, Toy Story had the second-biggest opening for an animated film in the UK, behind Shrek The Third.

Director Lee Unkrich’s comedy breezed past Toy Story 2’s 1999 opening of $12.4m (£8m) and easily surpassed the performance of Pixar’s 2009 hit Up, which made $9.9m (£6.4m) on its debut weekend in the UK. 2010’s previous top opener The Twilight Saga: Eclipse took $20.6m (£13.7m) earlier this month.

In its second week, Warner Bros.’ Inception continued to do good business as it generated $6.3m (£4.1m) from 456 screens, giving it a cumulative total of $22m (£14.2). Christopher Nolan’s thriller is likely to achieve a high multiple visit rate with many cinema-goers wanting to see the film a second time to make sense of its complexities.

Paramount’s The Rebound starring Catherine Zeta Jones was the second highest new entry of the week entering the UK chart in fifth position. The romantic comedy took $556,440 (£360,000) from 306 screens at a screen average of $1,819 (£1,177).

Eros’ Katha Meetha took the seventh most at the UK box office over the July 23-25 weekend, recording a total of $556,800 (£360,000) from 306 screens. Celebrated Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar stars and produces.

Optimum’s Splice was the fourth new top ten entry after grossing $472, 200 (£305,400) from 354 screens. Adrien Brody’s second sci-fi thriller of the month (Predators is currently in sixth position on the UK chart) follows two young scientists who splice together human and animal DNA to create a dangerous organism.

This week sees the anticipated release of The A-Team, Joe Carnahan’s spin on the popular ‘80s TV series, and Sony’s reinvention of The Karate Kid, starring Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith.

Topics