Reviews were embargoed until 10pm London time last Tuesday (22 March) – after official premieres of the film had already occurred in Mexico City, Los Angeles and New York – but Warners could not indefinitely postpone the day of reckoning for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. The question was: would reviews, if largely negative, hamper the box-office?
The answer, so far, is not really. Critical adulation, had it occurred, may have pushed the numbers even higher, but nobody can fairly call the results disappointing. In the UK, the film opened with £14.62m over the three-day weekend, with Easter Monday pushing the four-day total to £17.96m.
For comparison, Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel began in June 2013 with £11.2m. As for Chris Nolan’s Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight kicked off in July 2008 with £11.19m including previews of £2.5m, and The Dark Knight Rises with £14.36m (and no previews). Comparing the three-day openings, Batman v Superman has debuted a tiny bit ahead of The Dark Knight Rises, but with the benefit of four years of ticket-price inflation.
For comparisons with the top Marvel titles, Avengers Assemble kicked off with £13.22m plus £2.55m in previews, while sequel Age of Ultron began with £14.42m plus £3.6m in previews. Again, ignoring previews, Batman v Superman has opened a tiny bit ahead of Age of Ultron, with the benefit this time of just one year’s ticket price inflation. In terms of pure box office, Warners and DC Comics can fairly claim bragging rights on the biggest ever opening weekend for a superhero movie at UK cinemas.
Opening just as the vast majority of UK schools broke up for the two-week Easter holiday, Disney Animation’s Zootropolis was nicely positioned to target the family audience. The animal animation debuted with £3.57m, with previews taking the tally to £5.31m. Add in a splendid £1.72m for Easter Monday and the total so far rises to £7.03m so far. The film should enjoy two weeks of further solid play before kids return to school on 11 April.
For comparison, Disney Animation’s Big Hero 6 kicked off in January 2015 with £3.81m plus previews of £480,000. Before that, Frozen began in December 2013 with £4.7m, and no previews. Wreck-It Ralph started its run in February 2013 with £4.63m, also with no previews.
Zootropolis faced significant competition for the family audience in the shape of Kung Fu Panda 3, which managed £1.2m over the weekend period, and £1.72m including Easter Monday. And of course families with slightly older kids would have been pulled to the 12A-rated Batman v Superman. Disney will be hoping that positive word of mouth on its film will see it win the war: the animal adventure has an 8.4/10 IMDb user rating and a 78/100 MetaCritic score. Kung Fu Panda 3 has been on release for two weeks longer than Zootropolis, achieving £9.47m so far.
With Grimsby now dropping out of the UK Top 10, there was a gap in the market for a non-animated comedy, one that Universal hoped to plug with My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2. A belated sequel to the Nia Vardalos-penned original, the film was not beloved by critics, earning a one-star rating in the Guardian, for example.
Debut takings of £984,000 compare with £1.5m for the original My Big Fat Greek Wedding back in September 2002. Easter Monday lifts the number to £1.3m. The original film maxed out at £13.56m – a target that is certain to elude the sequel, despite the advantage of significantly higher ticket prices. Still, with a production budget pegged at a relatively restrained $18m, this could end up being a profitable title for the film’s backers, especially with a rich afterlife on DVD and other platforms.
As new titles arrive each week, existing ones might get shoved into screens with smaller capacities, have their number of showtimes per day reduced, or they might lose purchase on a cinema altogether. But site counts can often remain surprisingly robust deep into a film’s run, as they cling on in some capacity at venues.
What was unusual about the Easter session, then, is the deep reduction in site counts for many films in the market. With Batman v Superman occupying multiple screens at multiplexes across the UK, and Zootropolis and My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 also arriving, it was more a case of tossing out product altogether, rather than mere reduction of showtimes.
London Has Fallen did better than most, losing only 124 of its 484 cinemas. The Divergent Series: Allegiant wasn’t so lucky, dropping from 532 sites to 338. Deadpool, which has been on release for six weeks, plunged from 404 venues to just 208. Hail, Caesar! crashed from 462 cinemas to just 140. In the circumstances, box-office drops for mature titles were not that calamitous – Hail, Caesar! fell 54% in revenue achieved from 70% fewer locations, for example, meaning its site average actually went up.
Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise fell a reasonable 38% at the box-office from its opening frame, on 8% fewer screens. Total including Easter Monday is a nice £1.21m, which compares with £662,000 for the lifetime of the director’s previous biggest hit, Sightseers. High-Rise arguably benefited from the lack of a major English-language title coming against it in its second week of release. Instead, it faced French thriller Disorder, Chilean arthouse drama The Club and other commercially modest challengers.
Disorder opened on 50 screens – relatively broad for a foreign-language film in the UK, and its wide reach reflects commercial elements including genre (home invasion thriller) and cast members (notably Matthias Schoenaerts). But it was beaten at the box-office by Marguerite in its second week of play – a rather more middlebrow-seeming offering with a clearly defined audience of older upscale cinema-goers. Disorder debuted with £49,400 including Easter Monday, with previews taking it to £86,400. Marguerite was a shade ahead with £53,300 from 42 cinemas, including Easter Monday, taking its total so far to £136,000.
Thanks to the arrival of Batman v Superman, takings are 195% up on the previous frame, and also 85% up on the equivalent weekend from 2015, when Cinderella was the top new release. Unsurprisingly, no big studio movie is going up against Batman v Superman in its second session, so expect takings to dip this weekend. Instead, Lionsgate is releasing its heartwarming British comedy Eddie the Eagle, which in fact arrived in cinemas on Easter Monday and continues to play all week. The film did well on Monday, so expect a healthy seven-day total when Eddie officially reports next week. Lionsgate also has Natural Born Pranksters, starring a trio of popular YouTube pranksters in cinemas on April Fool’s Day (ie Friday) only, with simultaneous release on DVD and VOD. The big arthouse challenger is the Berlin-set Victoria, an acclaimed title that pivots from slacker romance to heist thriller, played out in real time and shot in a single take. Audiences with an appetite for a film that offers something genuinely different might take note.