The winner: Peter Rabbit

Despite facing the challenge of Steven Spielberg blockbuster Ready Player One, Peter Rabbit exploited the start of the Easter school holiday to generate brilliant box office, holding on to the top spot once again in its third week of release. Takings rose an impressive 22% from the previous session, with £5.61m for the weekend period and £21.4m after 17 days. Including Easter Monday, the total rises to a powerful £24.2m. The Beatrix Potter adaptation has a lot more of the school holiday yet to play, and it should perform strongly right the way through to the end of next week.

Peter Rabbit has already overtaken Pixar’s Coco (£18.3m) to become the biggest family film of 2018. StudioCanal’s Paddington 2, released last November, stood at £23m at the same stage of its run, and has now reached a mighty £42.6m.

The runner-up: Ready Player One

Even though it failed to dislodge Peter Rabbit from the top spot, Warners should be satisfied with the debut numbers for Ready Player One: £4.03m over the weekend period, £5.11m including Thursday previews and £6.64m including Easter Monday. While that doesn’t quite match the opening session for Spielberg’s The BFG in July 2016 (£5.29m), Ernest Cline’s sci-fi novel doesn’t have the same audience profile in the UK as Roald Dahl’s beloved children’s classic.

Making apt comparisons for Ready Player One is a tricky challenge, because it’s based on a YA novel not a video game, but gamers certainly represent a key component of the envisioned audience. The film’s 1980s references potentially provide a handy hook for nostalgic adults, stretching the target across a broad age demographic. Ender’s Game, based on Orson Scott Card’s 1985 novel and with a cast led by Harrison Ford and Asa Butterfield, might be one valid comparison, although there was much less excitement around the release of that film: it opened in November 2013 with £1.16m.

The upscale family film: Isle of Dogs

Is Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs for grownups, kids, or both? Distributor 20th Century Fox is betting on the last of those three possibilities with the release of this stop-frame animation, which sees a young boy bravely go in search of his pooch Spots when all canines are banished to Trash Island in a dystopian future Japanese city.

Isle of Dogs has opened with a decent £1.45m from 472 cinemas for the weekend – £1.64m including previews and £2.23m including Easter Monday. Those numbers are similar to the debut session of The Fantastic Mr Fox in October 2009: £1.52m from 481 sites. Of course, there has been a fair amount of ticket price inflation since that time; on the other hand, Fox had the advantage of being based on another Roald Dahl novel, whereas Dogs did not start with existing audience awareness.

The unstoppable train: The Greatest Showman

While films spanning the genres saw falls from the previous weekend as steep as 50% (Tomb Raider, Game Night) and 60% (Pacific Rim: Uprising, Red Sparrow, Unsane), The Greatest Showman once again defied gravity with a 7% rise. Weekend takings of £812,000 push the total after 14 weeks to £41.5m, and £41.8m including Easter Monday. That puts the Hugh Jackman musical just outside the top 50 films of all time at the UK box office. The top musicals remain Beauty and the Beast (£72.4m) and Mamma Mia! (£68.6m), with The Greatest Showman in third place – unless you count Disney’s The Jungle Book remake (£46.3m) or animation Frozen (£43.0m).

The market

Box office numbers are in for last month, and they show a significant drop on March 2017 – down by 28%. The poor performance means that, while box office for January and February was marginally up on the same months in 2017, the first quarter (or, more accurately, the year to 29 March) is trailing a year ago by 9%.



The better news is that last weekend is 24% up on the equivalent period from 2017, when Ghost in the Shell and Smurfs: The Lost Village were the top new releases. The coming session looks set to be dominated by films already in the market (such as Peter Rabbit, Ready Player One and Isle of Dogs), but audiences could get excited about John Krasinski’s high-concept horror A Quiet Place. Also in the mix: US teen flick Love, Simon, UK genre title Ghost Stories (adapted from the hit stage play) and Bruce Willis in Eli Roth’s reboot of Death Wish.

Top 10 films, 30 March – 1 April

1. Peter Rabbit, £5,610,556 from 694 sites. Total: £21,643,421 (two weeks)

2. Ready Player One, £5,113,041 from 621 sites (new)

3. Isle of Dogs, £1,641,509 from 472 sites (new)

4. Blockers, £1,349,627 from 440 sites (new)

5. Black Panther, £1,044,075 from 420 sites. Total: £46,711,648 (seven weeks)

6. The Greatest Showman, £812,202 from 409 sites. Total: £41,494,128 (14 weeks)

7. Pacific Rim: Uprising, £655,858 from 500 sites. Total: £3,160,865 (two weeks)

8. Duck Duck Goose, £653,832 from 453 sites

(new)

9. Tomb Raider, £570,156 from 466 sites. Total: £6,726,617 (three weeks)

10. A Wrinkle in Time, £387,917 from 507 sites. Total: £1,462,435 (two weeks)

Other openers

Così fan Tutte – Met Opera, £261,409 from 207 sites

Baaghi 2, £167,625 from 51 sites

Midnight Sun, £163,482 from 273 sites

Journeyman, £60,249 (including £29,151 previews) from 38 sites

Cake, £47,137 from 48 sites

Nick Jr Big Screen Heroes, £26,471 from 106 sites

Wind in the Willows: The Musical, £13,407 from 60 sites

Rangasthalam, £1,268 from one site

The Bachelors, £1,116 (including £676 previews) from 2 sites