Pixar’s Onward Tops the Box Office, Parasite Breaks Record – UK Box Office Report 6-8th March 2020

5 weeks after its initial release, following huge awards season success (and with a black and white release in the works), Bong Joon-ho’s thriller Parasite is still making its mark on the UK box office.

This weekend, the Korean-language film surpassed Mel Gibson’s 2004 epic The Passion of the Christ (£11.08 million) to hit a previously unforeseen mark of £11.5 million in the UK, making it the region’s highest grossing foreign language film of all time.

This weekend also saw the highly anticipated release of Disney Pixar’s latest fantasy adventure, Onward, which took £3.4 million to secure first place in the UK top ten.

After the huge success of the two previous Pixar films, 2018’s The Incredibles 2 (£55.9 million) and 2019’s Toy Story 4 (£63.2 million), it was easy to predict the continued success of the animation giants, though Onward has notably ended the weekend with figures much lower than The Incredibles 2’s £9.7million and Toy Story 4‘s £8.28million opening weekends. With fears of the COVID-19 likely a factor in its underwhelming start, Onward also earned significantly less than Pixar’s last original story Coco, which grabbed £5.25million in its opening weekend back in 2017.

Elsewhere on the chart, there’s a debut for Military Wives from Lionsgate UK, which comes in at third in our top ten this weekend with a strong £968,468. 

The UK box office chart for the weekend of 6th-8th March 2020:

Film titleWeeks of releaseWeekend totalTotal UK box-office to date
1. Onward (Disney/Pixar)1£3,419,500£3,419,500
2. The Invisible Man (Universal)2£1,538,985£5,002,167
3. Military Wives (Lionsgate UK)1£968,468£968,468
4. Sonic the Hedgehog (Paramount)4£951,103£18,459,137
5. Parasite (Studiocanal)5£529,550£11,460,342
6. Dark Waters (Entertainment One UK)2£499,276£1,892,566
7. Fantasy Island (Sony Pictures)1£392,857£392,857
8. Dolittle (Universal)5£392,693£15,692,992
9. Event Cinema: Riverdance (More2Screen)1£313,000£640,390
10. Emma. (Universal)4£284,518£7,072,620

The highest grossing films at the UK box office in 2020 thus far:

Film titleRelease dateTotal
1. 191710th January 2020£43.4 million
2. Sonic the Hedgehog14th February 2020£18.4 million
3. Bad Boys For Life17th January 2020£15.9 million
4. Dolittle7th February 2020£15.6 million
5. The Gentlemen1st January 2020£11.9 million

As predicted during last week’s box office report, Sonic the Hedgehog has this week surpassed the overall total earned by Bad Boys for Life to earn it a strong 2nd spot on the annual UK box office chart. Though unlikely to remain in the top 5 for the entire year due to the volume of huge releases still to come, this is a sure sign to distributors Paramount of the character’s viability as a franchise leader. To date, Sonic has earned $295million worldwide from a production budget of $85million, all-but securing a sequel.

This time next week, we could see Parasite jump The Gentlemen for a spot in our annual top 5.



Friday 13th may be unlucky for some, but there are plenty of films being released this weekend to distract us from such worrying fates. 

The Hunt is an action-horror film telling the terrifying story of a group of strangers who wake up in an unknown location. They don’t know who they are, where they are or what they’re doing there. They soon find out that they have one purpose, The Hunt. After the success of The Invisible Man (£5 million in the UK so far), we can expect great things from what should be a thrilling adventure. 

Vin Diesel (Fast and the Furious; Guardians of the Galaxy) is Ray Garrison, a soldier who is brought back to life by a team of scientists after him and his wife are assassinated. Enhanced with advanced technology, he then becomes a superhuman who becomes obsessed with avenging his wife death and goes by the name Bloodshot. Sony Pictures must be predicting Bloodshot to be a success as it is rumoured to be the start of a shared comic book universe using other characters from the Valiant Comics series. 

Britt Robertson (Tomorrowland; The Space Between Us) and KJ Apa (The Last Summer) star in I Still Believe; a romantic tale of a Christian musician whose journey teaches him the ways of love and loss, bug above all, hope. Sure to tug on heartstrings of cinema goers up and down the country, I Still Believe is in cinemas from this Friday. 

Also being released this weekend is the crime drama The Postcard Killings starring ‘The Walking Dead’ star Jeffrey Dean Morgan, a real life drama starring Javier Bardem titled The Roads Not Taken, and the emotional drama Never Rarely Sometimes Always, which is being released in select cinemas. 

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