bullet hit road

Source: Sony / Picturehouse Entertainment

‘Bullet Train’, ‘Hit The Road’

Rank Film (distributor)              Three-day gross (Aug 5 - 7) Total gross to date                            Week
 1. Bullet Train  (Sony) £1.9m £2.9m 1
 2. DC League Of Super-Pets  (Warner Bros) £1.2m £6.2m 2
 3. Minions: The Rise Of Gru  (Universal) £1.1m £36.7m 6
 4. Thor: Love And Thunder  (Disney) £938,102 £33.3m 5
 5. Elvis (Warner Bros)
£737,624 £22.7m 7

GBP to USD conversion rate: 1.21

Sony action thriller Bullet Train opened top of the UK-Ireland box office this weekend, with a £1.85m three-day start.

Playing in 671 locations, Bullet Train took an average of £2,751 per site – down on the opening averages of recent number ones DC League Of Super-Pets  (£3,632), Thor: Love And Thunder  (£13,118) and Minions: The Rise Of Gru (£16,327).

The Brad Pitt-led film opened on Wednesday August 3, taking £1m from two days of previews for a rolling total of £2.85m.

Warner Bros’ DC League Of Super-Pets moved down to second position on its second weekend, dropping 53.3% with £1.2m. It has £6.2m total. 

For Universal, Minions: The Rise Of Gru dropped 44.7% on its sixth weekend, with £1.1m bringing it to a £36.7m cume. The £47.8m of 2015’s Minions   should be beyond its reach, but it has still performed well.

Marvel Cinematic Universe title Thor: Love And Thunder dipped below the £1m mark for Disney, adding £938,102 on its fifth weekend – a 51% drop – to reach £33.3m. It is now the 12th -highest-grossing of 28 MCU films, with 2013’s Iron Man 3  and 2016’s Captain America: Civil War  (both £37m) its next targets.

Elvis’ sweet melody continues for Warner Bros, with the film falling just 33% with £737,624 taking it to £22.7m from seven weekends. It has now taken more than five-and-a-half times its opening weekend and counting, showing the strength of its tail (a final result of over five times the opening weekend is strong).

Top Gun  climbs all-time chart

Top Gun: Maverick fell 38% - a decent result in the context of the weekend – with £610,000 on its 11th weekend in cinemas. It is now up to £77.8m, as the 10th -highest-grossing film of all time in the UK and Ireland (Titanic is next ahead with £80.3m).

Where The Crawdads Sing

Source: Sony Pictures

‘Where The Crawdads Sing’

Sony literary adaptation Where The Crawdads Sing, which played at Locarno Film Festival this weekend with lead actor Daisy Edgar-Jones present, dropped 41.3% with £501,000 taking it to £5.3m from three weekends.

CinemaLive’s concert film Westlife: Live From Wembley Stadium took £392,091 on Saturday 6 with encore screenings on Sunday bringing it to a £464,340 weekend with 24 sites still to report.

Another event cinema title, NTLive’s Prima Facie starring Jodie Comer, continues to take money, with £148,667 from just over half of the 324 cinemas it played this weekend. It is now up to a £3.1m box office, and could still catch the £4.4m of 2019’s fellow NTLive release Fleabag.

Jurassic World: Dominion added £137,132 for Universal on its ninth session - a 52.4% drop - and is up to £34.3m.

Studiocanal’s The Railway Children Return dropped 47.9% on its fourth session, with £98,725 bringing it to £2.2m.

Universal’s The Black Phone  fell 36.4% on its seventh weekend, with £88,899 bringing it to a £4.4m cume.

Lightyear  dropped 67% for Disney, partly due to its launch on the Disney+ streaming platform last Wednesday. It added £32,109 on its eighth weekend and has £10.2m total.

Picturehouse Entertainment’s Hit The Road recorded the best hold in the chart, falling just 15% with £29,263 bringing it to £129,113 from two weekends. The film also played strongly in midweek with £45,000.

Dogwoof documentary Fire Of Love added £26,383 on its second weekend, for a running total of £137,333.

Vertigo indie title Joyride with Olivia Colman dropped 71.1% on its second weekend, with £17,292 and £156,629 in total.

BFI Distribution’s release of 1972 Jamaican crime film The Harder They Come took £8,999 on the weekend, with a total of £11,357.

Bohemia Media’s release of Maisie took £2,237 from eight sites, with a running total of £2,437 including previews.

Verve Pictures opened Fadia’s Tree to £1,600 from nine locations.

Several independent releases are still to report figures; the general trend continues to be tough for non-studio titles, with three of the top five having been in cinemas one month ago.