‘Predator: Badlands’ tops UK-Ireland box office with £2.4m; ‘The Choral’ tunes into second place

GBP to USD conversion rate: 1.32

Disney’s Predator: Badlands topped the UK-Ireland box office on its opening weekend, on another soft session that saw openings for The Choral and Die My Love.

Badlands made £2.4m from 581 sites for a £4,091 average. That marks the highest opening from the nine-film Predator franchise, ahead of 2010’s Predators (£2.2m) and 2004’s Alien Vs. Predator  (£2m), although both opened to higher location averages of £5,564 and £5,315.

Predators  ended on £5.8m with Alien Vs. Predator on £5.1m. A good tail could see Badlands pass both, although upcoming wide-release titles, including Wicked: For Good will provide competition for screens.

Nicholas Hytner’s UK indie title The Choral took  second place for the weekend with £902,925. Playing in 650 locations, the film took a £1,389 location average for Sony. It has £917,177 including previews.

Ralph Fiennes stars in the story of a Yorkshire choral society that recruits teenage boys after the men are enlisted into the First World War; the film is written by Alan Bennett, and produced by Hytner, Damian Jones, and Kevin Loader. 

Hytner and Bennett’s most recent previous collaboration The Lady In The Van started with £2.3m from 540 venues at a £4,259 average in 2015, ending on £12.7m.

Colleen Hoover adaptation Regretting You posted the best hold among the top 20 titles, falling just 13% with £791,000. It is up to £5.2m after three weekends – down on the £21.9m total of 2024 Hoover adaptation It Ends With Us, but still representing a reasonable total for Paramount in a slow market.

Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia also held better than the market average, dropping 29% on its second weekend with £547,798 for Universal Pictures. 

It has a total gross of £2.1m to date, behind the totals of The Favourite  (£17m) and Poor Things  (£7.6m), but overtaking Lanthimos’ 2015 The Lobster  (£1.5m), 2024 Kinds Of Kindness  (£1.1m) and 2017 The Killing Of A Sacred Deer  (£862,796).

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere added £331,791 on its third weekend – a 46% drop that brought it to £3.6m total for Disney.

Takings for the top five increased 32% from last week’s low point but are still just below £5m, and are a huge 65% down on the equivalent weekend from last year. Paramount’s The Running Man – opening this Wednesday, November 12 – will need to get off to a fast start, while Universal’s Wicked: For Good on November 21 can’t come soon enough for cinemas.

Ramsay’s Die is cast

Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie dropped out of the top five on its fourth weekend for Universal, falling 49% with £308,087 taking it to £5.7m total.

Lynne Ramsay’s Cannes Competition title Die My Love opened in seventh place, with £289,710 across the weekend for Mubi, from 272 screens at a £1,069 average. Including previews the film has £396,243.

It is behind the £492,297 start of Ramsay’s We Need To Talk About Kevin from 2011; but just ahead of the £288,344 opening of her 2017 You Were Never Really Here.

Having recorded a third-most nine Bifa nominations last week, UK indie I Swear continues to perform well for Studiocanal, dropping just 28% with £273,021 taking it to £5.6m.

Animation A Paw Patrol Christmas started with £250,000 for Paramount, from 561 sites at a £446 average. It is down on the £1.3m openings of both 2021’s The Paw Patrol Movie and 2023’s Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie, as well as the £521,505 of 2019’s Paw Patrol Mighty Pups and £483,886 of Paw Patrol: Read, Race Rescue from 2020; but above the openings of three previous Paw Patrol releases, and may find a strong tail heading into the Christmas period.

Sony anime Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc added £188,930 on its third weekend – a 47% drop that brought it to a £2.5m total.

Horror Black Phone 2 added £183,221 on its fourth weekend for Universal – a 57% drop that brought it to £3.6m total, now unlikely to catch the £4.7m of 2022’s The Black Phone.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s revolutionary thriller One Battle After Another leads Warner Bros’ slate, adding £180,540 on its seventh weekend – a 32% drop that brought it to a strong £11.6m total.

Altitude animation Pets On A Train dropped 38% on its third weekend in cinemas, with £166,000 taking it to £1.6m total.

Universal’s Back To The Future re-release dropped 82% on its second session, with £154,332 taking it to £1.3m total.

Trafalgar Releasing’s La Boheme – Met Opera 2025 took £121,931 from screenings on Saturday and Sunday, putting it 10^th among 17 theatrical releases of Giacomo Puccini’s famous opera, with encore screenings to come.

La Fille Mal Gardée took £93,815 at the weekend for Trafalgar Releasing, and has £434,645 in total having opened on Wednesday, November 5.

Disney’s Tron: Ares added £61,869 on its fifth session – a 68% drop that brought it to £4.9m total.

Derek Cianfrance’s Roofman  starring Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst added £54,000 on its fourth weekend – a 57% drop that brought it to £1.9m total.

Palestine 36  held well on its second weekend, dropping just 16% with £52,857 taking it to £188,772 for Curzon.

Suparn Varma’s Indian drama Haq, about a wife’s battle against her husband’s attempts to silence her, opened to £35,774 for Bakrania Media, from 42 sites at an £852 average.

Live action-animation hybrid Sketch added £27,590 on its third weekend for Kova International, and has £492,116 in total.

CinemaLive’s event cinema release Twice: Once In A Million opened to £26,465 at the weekend, and has £49,589 in total having opened on Thursday, November 6.

Night Of The Zoopocalypse has now been in cinemas for five weekends for Kazoo Films, and added £48,300 on its latest session to hit £1.1m total.

Anemone, the directorial debut of Ronan Day-Lewis starring and co-written with his father Daniel Day-Lewis, started with £25,627 at the weekend for Universal, from 161 sites at a £161 site average. Including previews and festival screenings, the film has £44,235.

Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind starring Josh O’Connor added £25,120 on its third weekend in cinemas for Mubi, and is up to £431,346, approaching three times the gross of Reichardt’s next biggest film Meek’s Cutoff  (£160,636).

Altitude horror Shelby Oaks added £25,000 on its second weekend – an 84% drop that brought it to £336,000 total.

Animated sequel The Bad Guys 2 remains in cinemas through a 16^th weekend for Universal, adding £22,279 on its latest session to hit £14.6m total.

Downton Abbey is finally starting to close its doors on cinemas, with The Grand Finale – the third film spun off from the hit TV show – adding £19,252 on its ninth weekend in cinemas to reach a strong £18.3m total for Universal.

UK indie Dragonfly from director Paul Andrew Williams opened to £17,611 for Conic, and has £24,958 including previews.

National Theatre Live’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession starring Imelda Staunton added £17,194 on its third weekend in cinemas, and is up to £910,733.

Aziz Ansari’s Good Fortune is up to £820,340, having added £13,773 on its fourth weekend for Lionsgate.

Luca Guadagnino’s After The Hunt is approaching its theatrical end with £527,215 total, after a £7,263 fourth weekend for Sony.

The Conjuring: Last Rites put on £7,072 on its 10^th weekend for Warner Bros, and is up to £18.3m as the highest-grossing title in the nine-film The Conjuring universe.

Indian title Madhaniyan put on £7,018 on its second weekend for Bakrania Media, and is up to £34,997.

Bat Out Of Hell – The Musical added £6,645 on its second weekend for CinemaLive, and is up to £451,773.

AA Films UK’s Baahubali: The Epic added £2,888 on its second session, released by Bakrania Media; and is up to £123,158.

Argentinian best international feature Oscar entry Belen took £1,369 from two screens for MetFilm Distribution, and has £3,429 including previews.

• The Brit 50: Ones to watch - UK production companies on the rise