The winner

Dropping a moderate 41% from its stonking opening weekend, Avengers: Age of Ultron grossed a healthy £8.59m in its second session to deliver an 11-day cumulative total of £32.3m, and £34.84m including bank holiday Monday, on 4 May. That’s both the highest second-frame takings and the highest total after two weekends of play since Skyfall in 2012.

The original Marvel The Avengers stood at £29.85m after the second weekend, meaning Ultron is running 8% ahead of the pace set by its predecessor. We would expect box-office on a sequel to be more front-loaded, so it’s likely that Ultron will decay faster than Avengers did, probably falling short of its mighty £51.8m final tally.

Avengers: Age of Ultron - video review Guardian

So far this year, the top grossing films are Fast & Furious 7 with £36.87m, Ultron with £34.84m, and Fifty Shades of Grey with £34.81m. The Avengers film is evidently going to sail way past its existing 2015 rivals, setting a target for this year’s other likely big hitters (Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Spectre) to match. Only one 2014 release managed to cross the £40m threshold: The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, with £41.26m.

Fast & Furious 7 looks set to fall just below £40m before the end of its run. If that occurs, distributor Universal will hardly be disappointed: the previous best in the franchise, Fast & Furious 6, topped out here with £25.3m. The seventh film is already 46% ahead of that total.

The new players

Far From the Madding Crowd – video review Guardian

With no major Hollywood release daring to challenge the Avengers, even in the film’s second session, the release date offered counter-programming opportunities. Fox Searchlight rolled the dice on its new production of Far from the Madding Crowd, presumably taking note of the absence of major prestige fare in the market at this period. And Universal offered teen-skewing horror Unfriended, which boasts the high-concept hook of unfolding essentially within an online video chat session on a laptop.

May isn’t a traditional month for literary period product, but the gamble paid off for Far from the Madding Crowd: Thomas Vinterberg’s Thomas Hardy adaptation debuted with £1.45m over the weekend, and £1.83m including bank holiday Monday.

Comparisons are tricky, because only one of Michael Winterbottom’s trio of Hardy adaptations – Jude, based on the 1895 book Jude the Obscure – is faithful to the original text’s setting. (The Claim and Trishna relocate The Mayor of Casterbridge and Tess of the d’Urbervilles to the Sierra Nevada and Rajasthan, respectively.) The three films grossed £1.48m collectively over their lifetimes – the same as Far from the Madding Crowd did in its first three days. Vinterberg’s film benefits from what is presumably a more generous production budget, a cast led by Carey Mulligan, and source material that is positively uplifting by Hardy standards.

Unfriended - video review Guardian

Unfriended, with a decent debut of £1.35m, looks likely to be a profitable title for Universal, given the rumoured $1m production budget. The film has grossed $29m in the US after two weeks of play. If the studio can recoup its whole marketing spend from the theatrical release, rich dividends await on DVD, video on demand and other platforms.

The family market

Four family films occupy positions fifth to eighth in the chart. Particularly worthy of notice is DreamWorks Animation’s Home, which has quietly piled up £21.82m in UK grosses, and £22.13m including bank holiday Monday. Not exactly a buzz title – Disney’s Big Hero 6, now at £20.12m, certainly arrived with more fanfare – Home has remained in the UK top five for seven consecutive weeks, and added another £1m to its tally over the weekend.

Cinderella is also doing nicely, adding more than £900,000 during the bank holiday weekend, for a total to date of £19.57m. That’s ahead of the lifetime of Disney’s big fairytale adaptation from last year, Maleficent, which had the advantage of 3D premium ticket prices.

Cinderella director Kenneth Branagh: ‘Shakespeare academics can be as bitchy as the fans of comic book movies’ - video interview Guardian

Two By Two and The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water complete the family quartet. Collectively, the four films have grossed just over £50m so far.

The arthouse market

Far from the Madding Crowd predictably proved the top attraction at independent cinemas, but its arrival didn’t capsize all the smaller competitors. Woman in Gold remained in the top 10 for a fourth week, having enjoyed relatively modest successive declines of 25%, 24% and 32%. Cumulative total is now £2.35m – that’s ahead of the more-celebrated Whiplash and Foxcatcher, and it has a way to go yet. Woman in Gold enjoys a significantly higher IMDb user rating (7.6/10) than it does MetaCritic score (51/100). The film benefits from a defined audience, and a cast member (Helen Mirren) who is a proven winner with its older-skewing target demographic.

The Falling: watch the trailer for Carol Morley’s five-star new film Guardian

Also in the mix are The Falling, Force Majeure, Alan Rickman’s A Little Chaos, Roy Andersson’s A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence and Noah Baumbach’s While We’re Young. Carol Morley’s The Falling has achieved a decent £319,000 so far, in relatively limited play. Force Majeure has been on release two weeks longer, and has clocked up a nifty £459,000. Ruben Ostlund’s Alpine drama is proving a winner with audiences, having posted successive gentle declines of 3%, 17% and 30%. Its total is already a creditable 5.3 times its opening weekend tally, and it will clearly go a fair bit higher.

The disappointment

Landing outside the top 20, despite a reasonably generous release at 101 cinemas, is Monsters: Dark Continent. The film earned £35,000 over the three-day weekend, yielding a poor site average of £345. The original Monsters debuted with £349,000 on 164 screens back in 2010 – almost exactly 10 times the sum achieved this time around.



A change in director and cast refresh meant that Dark Continent didn’t automatically inherit the audience from the first film, but this is a disappointing result by any measure. IMDb user rating and MetaCritic score are aligned at 4.4/10 and 42/100 respectively. Word is out that the titular monsters are peripheral to the film’s Middle East war storyline, a creative decision that the sequel’s backers are presumably now regretting.

The future

Watch Mad Max: Fury Road trailer in full – video Guardian

Thanks to the continued success of Age of Ultron, the overall market is a very healthy 101% up on the equivalent weekend from 2014, when The Amazing Spider-Man 2 held on to the top spot for a third week, and Pompeii was the top new release. Box office looks likely to dip in the coming session, which appears relatively fallow in the wake of Ultron and a week prior to Mad Max: Fury Road. Battling for audiences are TV spinoff Spooks: The Greater Good; high-concept romantic drama The Age of Adaline; Chris Rock comedy Top Five; and Samuel L Jackson action adventure Big Game. The arthouse charge is led by Céline Sciamma’s justly acclaimed Girlhood.

Top 10 films 1-3 May

1. The Avengers: Age of Ultron, £8,591,670 from 589 sites. Total: £32,297,331

2. Far from the Madding Crowd, £1,450,297 from 522 sites (new)

3. Unfriended, £1,346,952 from 436 sites (new)

4. Fast & Furious 7, £1,113,888 from 456 sites. Total: £36,549,326

5. Home, £732,514 from 513 sites. Total: £21,822,469

6. Cinderella, £675,425 from 514 sites. Total: £19,316,772

7. Two By Two, £566,871 from 427 sites (new)

8. The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, £203,935 from 400 sites. Total: £7,779,282

9. Woman in Gold, £190,175 from 207 sites. Total: £2,346,910

10. Child 44, £114,301 from 195 sites. Total: £1,275,845

Why Federico Fellini’s 8½ is the film you should watch this week Guardian

Other openers

Gabbar Is Back, £100,314 from 42 sites

Uttama Villain, £68,264 from 20 sites

Monsters: Dark Continent, £34,820 from 101 sites

Anti-Social, £20,953 from 31 sites

8½, £15,794 from eight sites (rerelease)

Samba, £15,750 from 17 sites

The Hero of Color City, £12,827 from 79 sites

Get Up and Go, £10,594 from 15 sites

Vai Raja Vai, £5,967 from eight sites

Argerich, £2,951 from seven sites

In the Blood, £1,793 from two sites

The Blood Street, £1,102 from five sites

Chimes at Midnight, £450 from one site (rerelease)

Bad Land: Road to Fury, £79 from two sites

Elsa and Fred, £70 from two sites

Rigor Mortis, £60 from one site

Born of War, £56 from one site

• Thanks to Rentrak.