Wall Street profits at the UK box office

With stories of city greed and hubristic falls from grace still high on the public’s wish-list Wall Street’s subject matter clearly appealed to UK cinemagoers. The opening take was Michael Douglas’ biggest in the UK since weekend charts began in the early ‘90s.

The week’s total turnover was unspectacular thanks to the lack of major US releases, blue skies and the public’s ongoing appetite for TV hit X-Factor, which had 13.5m viewers on Sunday and 12.2m on Saturday.

Warner Bros.’ comedy Life As We Know It debuted in second place after taking $1.6m (£985,558) from 395 screens at an average of $3,946 (£2,495) and Universal’s fantasy-romance The Death And Life Of Charlie St Cloud came in third grossing $1m (£643,368).

Paramount’s seventh placed Made In Dagenham was the weekend’s most resilient top 20 title, posting a -25% weekly change and a $1.8m running total.

Toy Story 3 took $413,396 (£261,359) for $116m (£73.3m) and is still screening on 399 screens, third most in the UK. Now in its 12th week, Disney’s behemoth is the longest running top-ten title of 2010.

EOne’s Howard Marks biopic Mr Nice debuted in 11th place making $380,086 (£239,844) from 102 screens at a decent average of $3,725 (£2,351).

Ayngaran’s Tamil sci-fir Enthiran saw the biggest top 20 reversal with a 62% drop.

In its fourth week Artificial Eye’s Winter’s Bone made $62,097 (£39,255) for $938,698 (£593,293). Debra Granik’s Sundance winner should surpass Artificial Eye’s biggest recent box office success Fish Tank, which grossed $948,118 (£599,282) last year, and will become the distributor’s biggest hit since Hidden took $1.5m (£920,000) in 2005.

Total weekly box-office revenue will be up next week with saturation releases for Universal’s animation comedy Despicable Me, Sony’s Facebook drama The Social Network and Fox’s spoof Vampires Suck.