The photo finish

Pitch Perfect 2 held on to the top spot over Friday, Saturday and Sunday, beating Mad Max: Fury Road by a narrow margin (£2.67m against £2.64m). But take Bank Holiday Monday into consideration, and over the four days Fury Road pipped Pitch Perfect 2, with £3.49m against £3.48m. The cumulative totals put Pitch Perfect 2 modestly in front (£10.59m against £10.54m), though it’s worth noting that Fury Road was released one day earlier.



Whichever way you look at it, both films are performing exceptionally. They complement well, appealing to different audiences, rather than competing. In terms of likely longevity, Fury Road is demonstrating greater stamina, with a decline of just 32% from the opening weekend number; Pitch Perfect 2 fell 47%.

Both are technically sequels, but Pitch Perfect 2 is performing more like one, with a sizeable chunk of its audience rushing to see it in its first week. Fury Road is a sequel to a dormant franchise, which younger audiences, not born when Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome was released in 1985, are discovering gradually. The original Pitch Perfect achieved a lifetime UK gross of £6.49m; the sequel looks on target to more than double that number. The half-term school holiday this week should also prove beneficial.



Data isn’t available to compare Fury Road and earlier Mad Max movies. Warners will be hoping to exceed the number achieved by the action blockbuster that it released in mid-May 2014 – Godzilla reached £17.24m by the end of its run.

The third-place tie

Over the Friday-to-Sunday period, Disney sci-fi adventure Tomorrowland: A World Beyond and horror reboot Poltergeist landed within £20,000 of each other (£1.48m against £1.46m). Including Bank Holiday Monday, victory for Tomorrowland was more emphatic, (£2.07m against £1.83m), but Poltergeist’s distributor Fox will be happy with the result.



Tomorrowland, starring George Clooney, benefits from a PG rating, Disney branding and potentially a very broad audience. A reported $190m budget is evident in the scale of production visible on screen. Poltergeist stars Sam Rockwell – the man Clooney directed in his 2002 Confessions of a Dangerous Mind – and has a reported production budget of $35m. Poltergeist is likely to burn out more quickly, and Tomorrowland should run longer. The Clooney picture should also gain from the half-term holiday.

Admissions update

Admissions figures for April show a healthy uptick on 2014, thanks to the contribution of titles such as Fast & Furious 7, The Avengers: Age of Ultron, Cinderella and Home. And for the first four months of the year, admissions are 9% up on the same period a year ago – an impressive surge in traffic through the doors.



The year had already benefited from hits such as 50 Shades of Grey, Big Hero 6, Kingsman: The Secret Service, The Theory of Everything, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Shaun the Sheep the Movie. The release calendar has a number of surefire winners later in the year – notably Minions, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Spectre – so cinemas are justifiably confident that 2015 will continue to track well ahead of 2014 levels. And there is no World Cup or Olympics this year.

The arthouse market

Once again, there are no arthouse movies in the box-office top 15, unless you count crossover fare such as Far From the Madding Crowd and A Royal Night Out. Top of the heap is François Ozon’s The New Girlfriend, starring Romain Duris, which kicks off with £60,000 from 44 cinemas (£83,000, including Bank Holiday Monday). Including previews, the total rises to a healthy £117,000. The numbers compare favourably with Ozon’s last film Jeune et Jolie, which began with £52,000 from 34 cinemas. Before Jeune et Jolie, Ozon’s well-regarded In the House kicked off with a more robust £209,000 from 80 cinemas, including previews of £10,000, on its way to an impressive £827,000. The New Girlfriend has a long way to go to match that tally.

A week ago, Olivier Assayas’ Clouds of Sils Maria began with a so-so £48,000 from 30 cinemas, plus £7,000 in previews. Thanks partly to an expansion to 40 venues, the film has posted a decent hold (down just 22%). With Bank Holiday Monday added in, the film stands at a decent £138,000 after 11 days.

The family audience

The title in the top 10 enjoying the smallest decline is DreamWorks Animation’s Home, down just 18%. Holding on at No 8 after 10 weeks of play, the road-trip adventure has clocked up an impressive £23.3m including Bank Holiday Monday – putting it ahead of the lifetime totals of the likes of WALL-E, Madagascar and Kung Fu Panda.



New animation Moomins on the Riviera suffers the indignity of delivering weekend takings lower than those achieved not just by veteran Home, but also fellow war horse Cinderella and animation Two by Two, now in its fourth week of play. The Moomins managed a poor £79,000 from 377 cinemas, rising to £124,000 including previews and Bank Holiday Monday. Numbers for the Moomins look positively robust compared with £19,000 from 83 cinemas for rival animation Dino Time, and £14,500 from 83 venues for tween adventure Up All Night, both playing exclusively with the Vue chain.

The future

Overall takings are a disappointing 34% down on the equivalent session a year ago, when X-Men: Days of Future Past landed at the top spot. Matters don’t look likely to improve in the immediate term, unless San Andreas (Dwayne Johnson plus earthquake) matches the top new release from the final weekend of May 2014 (Maleficent), which is unlikely. Also in the mix: British romcom Man Up, with Lake Bell and Simon Pegg; Al Pacino as a boozed-up rock star seeking late redemption in Danny Collins; and road-trip comedy Search Party. Timbuktu looks to be the top new attraction for arthouse audiences.



Top 10 films May 22-24



1. Pitch Perfect 2, £2,665,428 from 534 sites. Total: £9,769,828

2. Mad Max: Fury Road, £2,639,888 from 563 sites. Total: £9,690,578

3. Tomorrowland: The World Beyond, £1,482,178 from 544 sites (new)

4. Poltergeist, £1,463,014 from 434 sites (new)

5. The Avengers: Age of Ultron, £1,067,076 from 493 sites. Total: £44,992,078

6. Spooks: The Greater Good, £299,558 from 285 sites. Total: £2,704,488

7. Far From the Madding Crowd, £220,456 from 271 sites. Total: £5,358,741

8. Home, £206,394 from 454 sites. Total: £23,171,342

9. Tanu Weds Manu Returns, £174,938 from 59 sites (new)

10. Two By Two, £129,263 from 453 sites. Total: £1,538,858

Other openers

The New Girlfriend, £94,839 (including £34,630 previews), 44 sites

Moomins on the Riviera, £84,595 (including £5,932 previews), 377 sites

We Are Many, £48,876 (including £43,072 previews), 7 sites

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, £29,738, 25 sites

Dino Time, £18,882, 83 sites

Up All Night, £14,521, 83 sites

Oh Yarra Aivey Lutt Geya, £9,326, five sites

Na Maloom Afraad, £5,377, seven sites

Return to Sender, £2,892, 10 sites

Tokyo Tribe, £499, two sites

• Thanks to Rentrak

