per the UK Daily Guardian

http://tinyurl.com/owjprju

 

Disney sequel is top at the UK box office as Pacific Rim fails to impress, and Andre Rieu’s live concert pulls in the profits

 

The winner

The third successive sunny weekend continued to see tough conditions for film exhibition in the UK, with significant drops for existing films, and below-expected numbers for new entrants. At least there wasn’t a historic Wimbledon final to contend with. Top title was Disney-Pixar’s Monsters University, with £3.46m, well ahead of rival new entrant Pacific Rim.

Disney cheerfully announced, “Monsters University Withstands the Heat as it Comes Top of the Class at #1 at UK Box Office,” adding that the film had achieved strong evening business, indicating a broad audience that extends beyond the family market. Fair enough, but that’s only the 11th best three-day debut of 2013, behind Iron Man 3, Man of Steel,Despicable Me 2, Fast & Furious 6, Les Miserables, Star Trek Into Darkness, The Hangover Part III, The Croods and Disney’s own Wreck-It Ralph and Oz the Great and Powerful. Predecessor Monsters Inc debuted with a much more impressive £9.20m back in 2002, including previews of £2.71m.

In Disney’s favour are the strong legs often exhibited by animated features. For example, The Croods opened with £3.52m plus £1.85m in previews, and is now at an impressive £26.2m. Monsters University has posted a very similar three-day debut, and could easily end up with a comparable number, especially with the whole school summer holiday ahead of it.

Animation is so far proving particularly robust in 2013, with The Croods, Despicable Me 2 (£27.1m) and Wreck-It Ralph (£23.8m) among the top eight grossers so far. Despicable Me 2 is steadily rising up the all-time animation rankings, and now has Shrek (£29.0m), A Bug’s Life (£29.4m) and Chicken Run (£29.5m) in its sights.

Link to video: Monsters University

The disappointment

Critics and audiences bemoan Hollywood’s obsession with sequels and film based on established material such as comicbooks, TV shows and young adult fiction, but once again the numbers seem to support the studios’ risk-averse thinking. Pacific Rim, debuting with £2.19m is the latest film that is struggling to engage audiences, having been based on characters that lacked pre-existing awareness. The number would be less of a problem had the production budget not been a reported $180m (£118.5m).

Last summer, Battleship, derided at the time as a costly flop, opened with £2.25m plus £1.51m in previews. Thanks to director Guillermo Del Toro‘s credible reputation, Pacific Rim might hold up stronger in the coming weeks, especially as temperatures cool. But at this point it hardly looks a profitable endeavour for backers Warners.

The other big commercial disappointment of the summer so far is likewise based on an original story: M Night Shyamalan‘s After Earth, which debuted just ahead of Pacific Rim with £2.25m, and is now at £6.25m. Of course, critics may carp that the problem with Pacific Rim and After Earth is their familiarity, rather than their originality. The only 2013 release based on original characters that’s above £20m box-office is The Croods.

The live event

Dutch violinist André Rieu once again proved the potency of live events beamed into UK cinemas, with a stunning £449,000 on Saturday evening (includes some Sunday encore showings), according to distributor CinemaLive. The company adds that official data gatherer Rentrak has verified the result as the biggest opening weekend for an artist music concert at UK cinemas, ahead of May 2012’s Westlife farewell performance.

UK audience interest for Rieu’s concerts, beamed in from his home town of Maastricht, has been steadily growing since they began transmission here in 2010. His summer concerts in 2011 and 2012 grossed £55,000 and £153,000 respectively at UK cinemas, and his Home for Christmas 2012 pulled in £250,000, according to CinemaLive. A point to note: Rieu plays a week’s worth of concerts, and the cinema event has in fact been recorded several days before live satellite transmission.

The arthouse scene

Is your local arthouse playing mostly summer blockbusters? If so, it’s hardly surprising given the dearth of commercially viable specialised fare right now. With animation, action and comedies occupying the top eight places of the chart (respect to genre straddler Now You See Me, offering something a bit different and holding well in fourth place with £5.4m to date), and Bollywood flick Bhaag Milkha Bhaag in at number nine, the top release targeting non-mainstream audiences is The Bling Ring. Next comes Behind the Candelabra, now in its sixth week of release – the fact that it is still beating the numerous arthouse films released in the past month tells its own story. Everything else grossed less than £20,000 at the weekend, and the Other Openers chart below is mostly a sorry tale of woe.

Link to video: The Bling Ring

The future

Overall, the weekend box-office is 43% down on the equivalent frame from 2012, although, as so often, the devil is in the details. A year ago the market was boosted by two successive weekends of previews in England and Wales for Ice Age 4: Continental Drift, totaling £4.8m – whereas there were no previews to add in for Monsters University or Pacific Rim. Cinema owners will now be pinning hopes on a) an end to the heatwave and b) a nice big opening from The World’s End, which reunites Edgar Wright with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. There’s also serial killer investigation The Frozen Ground, with Nicolas Cage, John Cusack and Vanessa Hudgens; Swedish thriller Easy Money with Joel Kinnaman; and arthouse offerings including Breathe In and Wadjda.

Top 10 films

1. Monsters University, £3,463,917 from 525 sites (New)

2. Despicable Me 2, £2,225,543 from 539 sites. Total: £27,082,903

3. Pacific Rim, £2,193,500 from 494 sites (New)

4. Now You See Me, £1,142,376 from 478 sites. Total: £5,366,612

5. The Internship, £397,660 from 388 sites. Total: £2,263,505

6. World War Z, £382,975 from 366 sites. Total: £13,242,263

7. Man of Steel, £278,607 from 317 sites. Total: £29,190,336

8. This Is the End, £181,367 from 265 sites. Total: £3,677,230

9. Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, 56 sites, £89,348

10. The Bling Ring, £76,540 from 75 sites. Total: £348,269