The winner: The Revenant

Sitting pretty at the top of the chart in its second week of play, The Revenant resisted the challenge of all the weekend’s new releases, variously starring Ice Cube, Kevin Hart, Steve Carell, Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt, Sandra Bullock and Chloë Grace Moretz.

How historically accurate is The Revenant? Read more

Declining only 24% from its opening weekend, with second-weekend takings of £3.86m, The Revenant has reached a muscular £12.01m after just ten days on release. Fellow 2016 best picture Oscar nominees The Martian and Mad Max: Fury Road grossed £3.85m and £2.64m respectively in their second weekends. Totals on those titles after two weekends stood at £13.21m and £9.69m, but both had enjoyed an extra day of play due to a Thursday opening.

With The Revenant certain to remain very much part of the awards conversation through to the Baftas on 14 February and the Oscars on 28 February 28, box-office is likely to continue a relatively gentle descent. A total above £20m looks highly probable. DiCaprio’s last film The Wolf of Wall Street grossed £22.7m in the UK. His biggest hit, Titanic, earned £80.1m including the 3D re-release, and Inception managed £35.8m.

The mainstream challenger: Ride Along 2

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ice Cube, Olivia Munn and Kevin Hart in Ride Along 2. Photograph: Quantrell D Colbert/AP

When Ride Along opened in February 2014, UK distributor Universal was delighted with an opening session of £1.42m, confirming Kevin Hart as a proven box-office star in this market. Now, with Ride Along 2, Hart’s UK star status solidifies, thanks to an improved debut of £2.14m, a 51% rise on its predecessor. Ride Along, which teams him with Ice Cube, is so far proving Hart’s most popular property. Last year, The Wedding Ringer began with £990,000 including £164,000 in previews. Get Hard did better, kicking off with £1.44m, although co-star Will Ferrell must take a chunk of credit for that number.

The fresh awards contender: The Big Short

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Big Short – trailer

Another weekend, another major Oscar contender, with The Big Short arriving in UK cinemas last Friday. An adaptation of Michael Lewis’ non-fiction book about the 2008 financial crisis doesn’t immediately suggest itself as big box-office, and previous films with similar themes – including Margin Call and Arbitrage – were commercially modest. But an energetic comedic treatment by director Adam McKay (Anchorman) and a starry cast have helped punch The Big Short through to audiences, as have mostly positive reviews (81/100 at MetaCritic) and five Oscar nominations including for best picture, best director, and best supporting actor for Christian Bale; resulting in a UK debut of £1.30m. Sunday takings were well ahead of Friday’s, which is unusual for a non-family film. The Big Short scooped the big prize, the Darryl F Zanuck Award, at the Producers Guild Awards in Los Angeles on Saturday night, but it seems rather unlikely that this win could have had much of an effect on Sunday takings in the UK. More plausibly, the film is simply enjoying strong word of mouth, as shown by an IMDb user rating of 8.0/10. The PGA win puts The Big Short right back in contention for a major Oscar win, reining in The Revenant which had begun to look like the runaway winner.

The YA adaptation: The 5th Wave

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Stunned by a 15 certificate … Chloë Grace Moretz in The 5th Wave. Photograph: Chuck Zlotnick/Columbia Pictures

Adapted from the Rick Yancey science fiction novel, and featuring a female teen protagonist, future dystopia, alien invasion and two appealing romantic options for our heroine, The 5th Wave appeared to have all the elements needed to connect it with the tween and early-teen girl audience that has proved so crucial to the success of franchises such as Twilight, The Hunger Games and Divergent. What The 5thWave crucially lacked, however, was the certificate – a 12A – that would have made the film available to those audiences in The UK. Instead, British censor the BBFC slapped it with a 15 (for “strong violence” and “injury detail”). In the US, it’s rated PG-13. The 5th Wave debuted with a rather flat £498,000 from 338 cinemas. In the US, it opened with $10.3m. Based on that number, a UK debut gross of around £1m might have been predicted.

The awards battle

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Room – trailer

In addition to The Revenant and The Big Short, four other films in the UK Top 10 – Creed, Room, The Hateful Eight and The Danish Girl – have earned Oscar nominations in at least one major category. Lenny Abrahamson’s Room expands from 197 to 300 cinemas in the UK and Ireland, a rise that helped arrest box-office erosion. Takings overall rose by 11%, with a ten-day total of £1.77m. Ireland is clearly a factor in the film’s success so far. Room currently enjoys even higher ratings than The Big Short, with 8.3/10 at IMDb and 86/100 at MetaCritic. Brie Larson is currently favourite to win best actress at the Oscars, and awards attention on Larson should help sustain Room’s box-office takings. Fast-falling The Hateful Eight dropped another 49%, and now stands at £6.34m. The Danish Girl, declining by 43%, is at £6.44m. Creed fell 45% and is at £4.31m after ten days. The film’s sole Oscar nomination – for Sylvester Stallone in best supporting actor – is surely a negligible factor in its box-office success so far.

The invisible flop

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Dark Places … planned for single screen to DVD release strategy. Photograph: Everett/Rex/Shutterstock

When Gone Girl arrived in UK cinemas in October 2014, the adaptation of the Gillian Flynn bestseller kicked off with a very robust £4.11m (including £517,000 in previews), on its way to a total north of £22m. Anticipation for the next adaptation of a Flynn novel – Dark Places – was high. Starring Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Christine Hendricks, Chloë Grace Moretz, Tye Sheridan and Corey Stoll: not exactly crammed with A-listers, but definitely an ensemble of respected names. Released on a token single screen by local distributor eOne, Dark Places has debuted here with a very modest £625. By not playing in any sites in the Cineworld, Vue and Odeon chains, eOne aims to release Dark Places swiftly to DVD, and is in fact doing so on 22 February. Otherwise, the delay to a DVD release in order to respect the theatrical window would have had to exceed 16 weeks.

The slightly more visible flop

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Our Brand is Crisis – trailer

Pushed out to 119 cinemas, but with a marketing campaign that might be politely termed fiscally responsible, is Our Brand is Crisis, starring Sandra Bullock and Billy Bob Thornton as political spin doctors working for rival candidates in a Bolivian presidential election. Initially developed as a starring role for George Clooney (the gender of the protagonist was flipped for Bullock), and produced by Clooney with his Smokehouse partner Grant Heslov, this is the latest from admired – but commercially patchy – director David Gordon Green. It’s based on the 2005 documentary of the same name, and is inspired by events that occurred in 2002. Our Brand is Crisis grossed a disappointing $7m when released in the US last October, from a reported production budget of $28m. The UK never looked likely to buck that trend, and so it proved, with a debut gross here of just under £28,000, yielding a weak site average of £233. The result was never going to be pretty, but releasing in the white heat of awards season can’t have helped.

Annual admissions update

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Yes, the December box office really was that high. Photograph: Allstar/Disney/Lucasfilm

Admissions figures – based on the number of tickets sold – have now emerged for last December, and they show the biggest number for any month in 2015, boosted by Star Wars: The Force Awakens. This means that the tally for the whole of 2015 is also available: there were 171.9m tickets sold, a welcome uplift of 9% from the previous year. Less encouragingly for the UK distribution and exhibition sectors, the total is the best only since 2012 (172.5m). Since the turn of the 21stcentury, 2015 was also beaten by the admissions tallies of 2002 (175.9m) and 2009 (173.5m). While delivering the fourth best admissions total in modern times might be thought cause for celebration, this ignores the fact that the planets were extraordinarily well aligned for box-office success in 2015, with Hollywood studios offering Star Wars, Bond and Avengers movies, a reboot of Jurassic Park, plus more Fast & Furious, a Despicable Me spinoff, two films from Pixar (one of which hit big, the other didn’t), and Fifty Shades of Grey. Cinemas are unlikely to welcome such a commercially strong set of titles in a single calendar year for some time, and the industry has a fight on its hands if 2016 has any hope of coming close to 2015.

The future

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Youth – trailer

Overall, weekend takings are 11% down on the previous frame, but an encouraging 19% up from the equivalent period in 2015, when a relatively quiet session saw the arrival of Ex Machina and Mortdecai. This Friday sees the arrival of Spotlight, the last of the eight films earning best picture Oscar nominations to see a UK release. It’s joined by raunchy comedy Dirty Grandpa, starring Robert De Niro and Zac Efron partying during spring break in Daytona Beach, Florida. Alternatives include Michael Bay’s Libya-set 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, and The 33, recording the heroic rescue of the Chilean miners trapped underground in 2010. Capture the Flag is a family animation with a space-travel theme. Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth sees the Italian auteur try his hand again in the English language, with Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel, Rachel Weisz and Paul Dano among the cast.

Top 10 films January 22-24

1. The Revenant, £3,856,489 from 623 sites. Total: £12,008,304

2. Ride Along 2, £2,141,341 from 417 sites (new)

3. Star Wars: The Force Awakens, £1,997,507 from 574 sites. Total: £117,295,808

4. The Big Short, £1,302,205 from 412 sites (new)

5. Creed, £1,217,405 from 493 sites. Total: £4,305,551

6. Daddy’s Home, £1,005,761 from 458 sites. Total: £15,535,507

7. Room, £646,523 from 300 sites. Total: £1,777,258

8. The Hateful Eight, £567,527 from 339 sites. Total: £6,342,315

9. The 5th Wave, £497,568 from 338 sites (new)

10. The Danish Girl, £388,449 from 432 sites. Total: £6,439,738



Other openers

Airlift, £168,391 from 39 sites

The Taming of the Shrew – Bolshoi Ballet, £160,323 from 218 sites

The Assassin, £76,542 from 23 sites

Our Brand is Crisis, £27,713 from 119 sites

Kyaa Kool Hain Hum 3, £19,602 from 12 sites

Barbie: Spy Squad, £15,841 from 96 sites

Attacking the Devil: Harold Evans and the Last War Crime, £4,542 from 2 sites

The Last Diamond, £3,145 from 3 sites

The Visit: An Alien Encounter, £699 from 2 sites

Dark Places, £625 from 1 site

Lost in Karastan, £67 from 1 site