UK Box Office Report October 27-29th 2017

Posted on by Joseph Wade

This past weekend marked the debut of Thor: Ragnarok at UK cinemas, with the latest Marvel movie opening for “preview screenings” as early as Tuesday in an attempt to win the weekend; and win the weekend it did.

Ragnarok earned £12,375,804 to open over £10million higher than its closest competition – Jigsaw – placing itself firmly into the number 2 spot of the highest grossing opening weekends for superhero movies of the year.

  1. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 – Apr – £13.1million
  2. Thor: Ragnarok – Oct – £12.4million
  3. Logan – Mar – £11.9million
  4. Spider-Man: Homecoming – July – £9.4million
  5. Kingsman: The Golden Circle – Sept – £8.5million
  6. LEGO Batman – Feb – £7.9million
  7. Wonder Woman – May – £6.2million

The third instalment of the Thor franchise also out-grossed its franchise predecessors:

  • Thor – 2011 – £5.5million
  • Thor: The Dark World – 2013 – £10.5million
  • Thor: Ragnarok – 2017 – £12.4million

The weekend total puts the film above other recent Marvel releases such as Ant-Man (£6million) and Guardians of the Galaxy (£5.3million), as well as Doctor Strange which was released in the same week of October in 2016 but grossed some £3million less, landing at £9,288,898 for its debut.

Ragnarok was a saving grace for an otherwise lacklustre October month for the UK box office, which only had a disappointing Blade Runner opening of £6million to boast across its 5 weekends. It remains, however, far off reaching the £40million debut that James Bond film SPECTRE managed to achieve back in October 2015, a feat that remains a record and shall likely do so for some time.

Here are the week’s top 5:

With the weekend of course being that of Halloween, it was expected that the latest Saw movie Jigsaw would perform better than it did, barely staggering to a £1,851,249 opening that will surely receive a boost once Monday and Tuesday’s figures come in, but will sharply fall following Halloween on Tuesday the 31st. Expect Jigsaw to make around £3million in the entirety of its run.

Elsewhere, The Death of Stalin maintained its popularity to leap over Blade Runner 2049 in its second week of release, landing it close to £2.5million in its first 10 days at the box office; which is impressive for a British comedy such as this. The picture, which earned £995,458 in its opening weekend, maintained its impressive momentum by earning £812,288 this weekend, a drop-off so small that it’s almost unheard of for a wide release. Its place at number 4 in the chart does, however, indicate a much less positive picture for the Box Office as a whole, with only 2 films topping £1million for the first time since August and only the second time since Spring.

Here are the overall totals for the top 15 films at the UK Box Office:

  1. Thor: Ragnarok – weeks on release: 1 – weekend: £12,375,804 – total: £12,375,804
  2. Jigsaw – 1 – £1,851,249 – £1,851,249
  3. The Lego Ninjago Movie – 3 – £889,802 – £8,210,047
  4. The Death of Stalin – 2 – £812,288 – £2,469,700
  5. Blade Runner 2049 – 4 – £692,999 – £17,416,826
  6. Geostorm – 2 – £659,666 – £3,345,633
  7. My Little Pony – 2- £622,946 – £2,572,132
  8. Breathe – 1 – £535,675 – £535,675
  9. Happy Death Day – 2 – £434,871 – £2,157,390
  10. Kingsman: The Golden Circle – 6 – £373,276 – £24,247,191
  11. Call Me By Your Name – 1 – £235,760 – £235,760
  12. The Snowman – 3 – £110,625 – £3,148,114
  13. Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami – 1 – £98,299 – £98,299
  14. Secret Superstar – 2 – £91,851 – £511,587
  15. Despicable Me 3 – 18 – £81,384 – £47,562,575

The most remarkable news of this week’s lower chart is the return to the top 15 for Despicable Me 3 which, despite my claims that it would be moving on to the home video market imminently and would therefore no longer feature as a part of this analysis, has earned another £81,384 to leave it at £47.6million overall, which is by far the highest grossing of all the animated movies of 2017.

Elsewhere, Happy Death Day couldn’t survive in the top 5 for a second week, indicating that the horror film bubble was burst by the phenomenally performing IT which has now grossed a rather appropriate $666million worldwide. Andy Serkis’ Breathe also performed poorly, perhaps due to the timing of its release rather than the quality of the work or the draw of its star Andrew Garfield, with Call Me By Your Name and Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami representing the only other debut entries outside of the top 5.

In bonus box office news, the latest Weinstein Company film – Amityville: The Awakening – earned a mere $742 from 10 theatres at the North American box office this weekend, making a UK release unlikely and proving that news as heinous and public as that regarding TWC founder Harvey Weinstein can have adverse effects on the success of a film.

So that’s a wrap for this week’s box office analysis! Next week, expect Thor to maintain a strangle-hold on the top spot with the overall total perhaps reaching £20million, and let’s hope for more success for The Death of Stalin. It seems likely that The Snowman will leave us after 3 weeks on the chart and Kingsman: The Secret Service may not be far behind. In the meantime subscribe to our YouTube channel to be the first to see our weekly Box Office Chart Top 5 videos (released every Tuesday), and let me know your thoughts on this weeks results in the comments below!

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