More Fallen Kingdom vs Solo | UK Box Office Report 15-17th June 2018

With the World Cup kicking off late last week, there were no studio mega-budget blockbusters to debut on this week’s UK box office chart, leaving the road wide open for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom to keep a hold of the top spot for a 2nd weekend running. Hold on it did, but the big news from the top 5 comes from the debut of two new films including the surprising box office accumulation of Bollywood movie Race 3. We have a full box office report below, but first the top 5 chart…

At the very top of the UK box office for a 2nd straight weekend is one of the world’s biggest franchises, and a power player for studio Universal, Jurassic World, which earned £7,220,952 to take its overall UK total to £25,571,845.

This impressive debut, which has come before the release of the film in North America, has Fallen Kingdom sitting on a total accumulation that has completely dwarfed that of Disney’s Solo: A Star Wars Story, taking home £7.5million more than its Lucasfilm rival despite being in cinemas for just half the time.

The movie debuted in China this weekend to an astronomical $125million, taking its worldwide total to $372.1million ahead of this coming weekend’s North American bow where it is expected to make upwards of $100million in the opening weekend alone.

To continue the comparison of Fallen Kingdom to Solo (which was the Dino sequel’s biggest rival due to the Star Wars film being the most recent blockbuster release), Jurassic World 2 managed to accumulate 85% of Solo’s total international box office in just three days in China alone and has now made $30million more than Solo: A Star Wars Story worldwide despite being on release for half as long and not yet hitting its biggest market.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom has been so successful in the UK alone that it’s already the 5th highest grossing movie of 2018 and is quickly gaining pace on number 4 movie Deadpool 2 (which currently sits at £30,619,381).

Aside from the Jurassic World sequel, the biggest news to come out of the top 5 this past weekend was the somewhat incredible success of Bollywood action movie Race 3which accumulated £782,950 over the weekend to hit number 5 in the chart and earn a debut up to 7 times the gross of Ruper Everett’s The Happy Prince and comedy sequel Super Troopers 2. The movie is thought to have debuted strongly in India with a taking of around £13million and in the US where it earned another £1million, making it somewhat of a smash hit globally for the burgeoning industry.

It was joined in the top 5 by this week’s number 2 Hereditarywhich earned a sturdy £1,863,913 in 3 days in the region. This can only be good news for producers A24 whom have already witnessed their $10million project surpass its budget in its opening weekend in North America on its way to a total gross of $28.1million, nearly 3 times its budget. In the contemporary landscape, it seems that low budget horrors produced to a high quality, promoted correctly and released at the right time can make a lot of money not only in North America and the UK, but also worldwide, with A Quiet Place being the year’s prime example of this after making $326million worldwide from a $17million budget, leading some to claim that this is somewhat of a golden era for horror.



Here are the 15 highest grossing movies at the UK box office over the weekend of 15-17th June 2018:

  1. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom – weeks on release: 2 – weekend: £7,220,952 – total: £25,571,845
  2. Hereditary – 1 – £1,863,913 – £1,863,913
  3. Solo: A Star Wars Story – 4 – £972,673 – £17,988,593
  4. Deadpool 2 – 5 – £874,668 – £30,619,381
  5. Race 3 – 1 – £782,950 – £782,950
  6. Book Club – 3 – £413,904 – £3,128,182
  7. Avengers: Infinity War – 8 – £408,451 – £70,168,399
  8. Sherlock Gnomes – 6 – £404,882 – £8,045,654
  9. Show Dogs – 4 – £226,703 – £2,820,827
  10. Blade Runner: The Final Cut – £166,756 – £4,292,376
  11. The Happy Prince – 1 – £107,178 – £107,178
  12. Super Troopers 2 – 1 – £101,881 – £101,881
  13. McQueen – 2 – £98,753 – £339,964
  14. Event Cinema: Swan Lake – 1 – £71,257 – £71,257
  15. I Feel Pretty – 5 – £59,214 – £5,384,881

As referenced above, the other debuting films of the week were The Happy Prince and Super Troopers 2 which earned their spots as high as 11 and 12 because of the unusually low bar for the top 15 this weekend. In fact, if the films had been released in January for example, neither would have made the chart at all. This is despite Troopers working from a premise already explored and presented on the big screen before and The Happy Prince featuring involvement in front of the camera (and behind it) of famed British actor Rupert Everett as well as telling a tale surrounding the iconic Oscar Wilde.

Quite why each film performed so poorly remains to seen, though neither were met with overwhelmingly positive reviews and the timing of their debuts was surprising given that films of their type are usually reserved for early Spring and Autumn, especially in the case of a movie like The Happy Prince. 

Each film was so poorly received that they were out-grossed by 1982’s Blade Runner (which continues to rack up decent weekend box office totals during its latest run) and the poorly received Show Dogs, which earned around as much as The Happy Prince and Super Troopers 2 combined in its 4th weekend.

Internationally, new Pixar movie Incredibles 2 has debuted to the highest gross of any Pixar film in history with a grand total accumulation of $200million in North America in just 4 days, though the UK will have to wait for the mega-hit until late July due to Disney wanting to avoid World Cup fever.

So that’s this week’s report; thank you for reading! If you’d like to keep up to date with The Film Magazine, please bookmark our home page, follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook. If you’d like first access to our weekly UK box office chart videos (released every Tuesday) then make sure to subscribe to us on YouTube. Next week, the box office report will be covering the 6-day debut of Ocean’s 8 starring Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, Rihanna and Sandra Bullock. Until then, let us know which movies you’ve seen at the cinema recently in the comments below.



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