The winner: Venom
Reviews for Venom may have been discouraging, with a 35/100 score at Metacritic, but the enduring power of Marvel yielded a strong opening for the film, which does not sit inside the Marvel Cinematic Universe narrative. Venom began in the UK with £5.65m from 556 cinemas, and £8.03m including takings last Wednesday and Thursday.
One comparison might be with Spider-Man: Homecoming, which is likewise a collaboration between Marvel and Sony – that one debuted with £6.77m and £9.37m including previews, in July 2017. However, Venom doesn’t have equivalent brand value to Spider-Man, and unlike Homecoming does not include Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige among its roster of producers.
The current IMDb user rating for Venom is a decent 7.1/10, suggesting that so far fans are not sharing the rather dismal opinion of critics. Spider-Man: Homecoming has a 7.5/10 rating. These ratings tend to soften after the initial release period as a broader swathe of film fans see and rate a title.
The runner-up: Johnny English Strikes Again
In a nice counter-programming move to Venom, Universal-released Johnny English Strikes Again, the third in the series featuring Rowan Atkinson’s bumbling spy. A UK debut gross of £4.12m compares with an opening salvo of £4.97m for Johnny English Reborn back in October 2011. Factor in ticket-price inflation, and that is a notable softening of interest in the character this time around.
On the other hand, a £4m-plus debut is not too shabby, and the backers may be pleased that there remains interest in Johnny English 15 years after the first movie. The October half-term holiday is yet to come, and Johnny English Strikes Again should perform solidly throughout that period.
Third place: A Star Is Born
With a debut of £3.08m and £4.10m including last Wednesday and Thursday, A Star Is Born delivered a number that might have topped the UK box office chart in another week. In fact, on 18 previous occasions this year, the chart was topped by a film grossing less than A Star Is Born’s debut total.
Comparisons for A Star Is Born are hard to make, since it’s not a musical or a music biopic, but instead a fictional romantic drama set against the music scene – and those are few and far between. One comparison point might be the Dublin-set Once, but that was a small-scale film featuring a little-known cast. Another might be 8 Mile, although its story was informed by the life of its star, and 2002 was really a different era in terms of film distribution.
It’s very rare to see three films all open at £4m-plus in a single weekend – there are no previous occasions of this phenomenon occurring in the last five years. Examples of three new titles robustly segmenting the market include the mid-February 2016 instance when Deadpool, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip and Zoolander 2 all arrived together in the top three places, but the Zoolander film began with just £2.09m. Similarly, in mid-October 2015, Hotel Transylvania 2, Suffragette and Pan landed together as the chart’s top titles, but Pan’s debut figure was £2.74m.
The market
Data gatherer comScore has crunched the numbers for September – or rather the four-week period ending 4 October. Overall, UK takings were a disappointing 20% down on the equivalent period in 2017. For the year to date, the UK is now running 1% behind 2017 – a contrast with the situation at the end of August, when cumulative box office stood 1% ahead of the first eight months of 2017.
The good news for cinemas is that October has started in much stronger fashion – takings at the weekend were 71% ahead of the equivalent session from 2017. Cinema operators will be hoping for strong holds on the current top titles, plus some nice newcomer contributions from the likes of First Man (starring Ryan Gosling as astronaut Neil Armstrong), Smallfoot and Bad Times at the El Royale this weekend.
Top 10 UK films 5 to 7 October
1. Venom, £8,031,342 from 556 sites (new)
2. Johnny English Strikes Again, £4,117,692 from 589 sites (new)
3. A Star Is Born, £4,100,196 from 526 sites (new)
4. The House With a Clock in Its Walls, £902,203 from 534 sites. Total: £6,806,751 (three weeks)
5. Night School, £860,262 from 448 sites. Total: £3,122,918 (two weeks)
6. A Simple Favour, £484,975 from 429 sites. Total: £4,475,268 (three weeks)
7. Aida – Met Opera, £302,179 from 204 sites (new)
8. Crazy Rich Asians, £281,478 from 272 sites. Total: £5,403,572 (four weeks)
9. The Nun, £243,153 from 285 sites. Total: £11,099,719 (five weeks)
10. The Wife, £228,950 from 130 sites. Total: £924,023 (two weeks)
Other openers
Andhadhun, £55,990 from 29 sites
Loveyatri, £28,823 from 20 sites
Blindspotting, £28,231 from 33 sites
96, £22,949 from eight sites
Afsar, £19,775 from 11 sites
Kusama – Infinity, £16,532 from seven sites
Exes Baggage, £15,738 from five sites
Tehran Taboo, £11,415 from 14 sites
Columbus, £5,085 from seven sites
NOTA: None of the Above, £4,777 from 10 sites
Grace & Goliath, £4,530 from 15 sites
Female Human Animal, £3,140 from two sites
For Molly, £3,042 from eight sites
Strangeways Here We Come, £1,502 from four sites
Jalouse, £824 from one site
Blue Iguana, £37 from three sites