tenet car

Source: Warner Bros

‘Tenet’

Rank Film  (Distributor) Three-day gross (Oct 16-18) Total gross to date  Week
1 Tenet (Warner Bros) £186,000 £16.9m 8
Saint Maud (Studiocanal) £132,462 £520,491 2
3 Cats And Dogs: Paws Unite! (Warner Bros) £106,000 £869,000 3
After We Collided (Shear Entertainment) £100,219 £3.8m 7
5 On The Rocks (A24/Trafalgar Releasing) £45,446 £326,030 3

GBP to USD conversion rate: 1.30

Warner Bros’ blockbuster Tenet topped the UK box office for an eighth consecutive weekend, as takings for the top five titles decreased 39% on the previous session.

Tenet added £186,000, a fall of 37% on its previous session. It now has £16.9m, and will likely fall short of director Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, which made £20.7m in 2014.

It is still the third-highest-grossing film of the year in the UK, behind 1917 (£43.8m) and Sonic The Hedgehog (£19m).

The top five titles grossed a total of £570,127, down 39% on £929,892 last week.

Multiple distributors (who wished to remain anonymous) reported takings suffering as a result of ticket returns, due to public confusion about the rules for different ‘tiers’ of lockdown in the UK.

Several areas of the country, including large parts of the Northeast, West Yorkshire, Nottingham, Leicester, Birmingham. London, most of Essex, York, and north-east Derbyshire, are now in ‘tier 2’ of the lockdown scale. However, this does not affect cinemas’ ability to stay open, nor to continue screening films after the 10pm curfew as long as they have started before that time.

Cinemas in Ireland were required to close on October 7; with exhibitors in Northern Ireland required to follow suit from last week.

CinemaLive’s event cinema release Michael Ball & Alfie Boe – Back Together recorded a strong showing. The screening of the final show of the singing pair’s UK tour brought in £94,002 on its Saturday 17 release day, with a weekend total of £170,120, and £544 location average.

Studiocanal’s Saint Maud performed well in the current climate, falling just 27% on its previous session with a £132,462 weekend. The film is now up to £520,491 from two sessions.

Cats And Dogs: Paws Unite!, another Warner Bros title, dropped 42% on its third weekend, with a £106,000 session. It has £869,000 in total; while Bill And Ted Face The Music added £26,000 for £1.2m after five sessions.

Sofia Coppola’s On The Rocks, released by Trafalgar Releasing in partnership with A24, added £45,446 – a 40% drop – for £326,030 after three weekends.

Kenny Ortega’s 1993 comedy Hocus Pocus increased its takings 106%, with £42,135 bringing it to £78,353 for distributor Park Circus.

Dogwoof opened documentary I Am Greta to £29,500 from 243 locations.

Disney’s Onward, first released pre-lockdown, added £26,502 for a £7.6m cume. It is now the 11th-highest-grossing title of the year in the territory, with all of the top 10 bar Tenet having been released in the early part of the year.

Miranda July’s Sundance 2020 title Kajillionaire dropped 46% on its second session with £23,982 bringing it to £98,457 for Universal. The distributor also had Trolls World Tour adding £12,816 for £966,947 total.

National Amusements’ rep release Akira added £23,760 for £252,124 after two weekends.

An eight-location release of Fred Scott’s Roy Andersson documentary Being A Human Person grossed £958, with £1,511 including previews.