The winner: London Has Fallen

Critics may have queued up to aim punches at the film, but London Has Fallen shrugged off the blows, with a robust UK opening of £3.23m from 513 cinemas, including £511,000 in previews. That compares with £2.25m, including £652,000 in previews, for predecessor Olympus Has Fallen, just under three years ago. Gerard Butler returns as presidential bodyguard Mike Banner, this time saving his POTUS buddy from an ingenious set of terrorist attacks that wipe out five world leaders attending the funeral of the British prime minister.

Lionsgate’s announcement makes a cheeky sleight of hand by comparing the new film’s previews-inclusive total (ie £3.2m) with the first film’s weekend number minus previews (£1.6m), thus making the claim that London Has Fallen “takes home more than double its predecessor”. While that’s not really the case, London is a healthy 44% ahead of Olympus, if the previews-inclusive totals are compared, or 70% ahead if the actual weekend grosses are considered. London Has Fallen’s MetaCritic score of 28/100 is notably lower than IMDb users’ rating of 6.5/10, so it’s clear that critical and popular taste are adrift on this film. Rotten Tomatoes tells a similar story, with critics rating it 26% fresh, and 63% of users liking it.

The indie winner: Hail, Caesar!

By far the top attraction in indie cinemas nationwide, the Coen brothers’ Hail, Caesar! has opened with a healthy £1.52m, including modest previews of just under £80,000. That’s well up on the Coens’ predecessor, Inside Llewyn Davis, which began in January 2014 with £758,000 including previews of £45,000. It is, however, down on the debuts of True Grit (£1.82m) and Burn After Reading (£2.05m). Their best UK lifetime total so far comes courtesy of True Grit (£8.46m).

Watch the Hail, Caesar! trailer Guardian

Hail, Caesar! enjoyed particular penetration of the boutique indie chains, playing at every Picturehouse, Everyman and Curzon cinema, and was also present in virtually all of the other top indie venues. The sector was crying out for a commercially appealing title now that awards season is sputtering to a close.

The flops: The Other Side of the Door, The Choice and Truth

Opening at a collective 650 cinemas, three studio releases failed to entice many cinema-goers. Opening widest of the trio is Fox’s The Other Side of the Door, a supernatural horror about a child ghost wreaking havoc on his surviving family members. The unremarkable genre film began with a poor £263,000 from 335 cinemas.

That result puts its screen average ahead of Lionsgate’s The Choice, the latest romantic drama adapted from a Nicholas Sparks novel. The Choice kicked off with a weak £140,000 from 205 venues. UK grosses for Sparks films have been spiralling downwards for a while now. His last effort, The Longest Ride, kicked off with £419,000, and before that there were The Best of Me (£488,000 plus previews of £149,000), Safe Haven (£812,000) and The Lucky One (£830,000 plus previews of £329,000). Back in 2010, Dear John, starring Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried, began its UK run with just under £2m, including previews of £722,000.

Cate Blanchett: ‘The internet’s a washing machine where fact and opinion spin’ – video interview Guardian

Warner Bros released Truth, starring Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford, with little marketing support, and a feeble debut of just under £27,000 from 113 sites resulted. This title was presumably greenlit with an awards positioning in mind. After it became evident that Truth was not going to make headway with voters – and that any push on Blanchett this year would be for Carol instead – the film’s fate was pretty much sealed.

Secret Cinema rears its head

The latest event from Secret Cinema: Tell No One began its run on 17 February and has now enjoyed three weekends of play. Official data gatherer comScore didn’t initially include box-office data for the event, but it has suddenly popped into the official chart at No 12, with weekend takings of £188,000 from a single venue, 2% down on the previous frame, and with a total to date of £816,000. Secret Cinema doesn’t run on Monday or Tuesday, so that’s a 15-day figure, yielding a daily average of £54,000. The name of the film will be revealed after the run ends on 20 March.

The participatory event organiser follows up quickly with Secret Cinema Presents 28 Days Later, which runs from 14 April to 29 May. Ticket prices range from £40 (for NHS staff, armed forces, teachers and student card holders) to £64.50 (standard) and £129 (VIP ticket).

The Oscars boost: Spotlight

Why Spotlight should win best picture at the 2016 Oscars Guardian

The best picture Oscar win for Spotlight had a measurable effect on the film’s fortunes, with sixth-weekend takings growing by 70% on the previous frame to £333,000. The total to date is £5.41m. The Revenant, in contrast, dropped by 22% from the previous session – although that decline would typically be viewed as a healthy hold. Despite the drop, The Revenant actually grossed a bit more at the weekend than Spotlight, and now stands at a stunning £22.5m. The top grosser among the best picture Oscar nominees remains The Martian with £23.58m, so The Revenant needs to haul in another £1m or so to catch it. Both films are from Fox, so the studio has bragging rights this awards season either way.

The future

Overall, takings are 2% down on the previous frame, but a handy 11% up on the equivalent weekend from 2015, when a very weak session for new releases saw an unchanged top three (The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Focus, Fifty Shades of Grey). Now cinemas have hopes pinned on the arrival this weekend of Kung Fu Panda 3 – which already played solid previews on Saturday and Sunday. Allegiant, the latest in the Divergent series, arrives on Thursday, powered by a suitably muscular marketing campaign from local distributor eOne. There are also rival elevated genre titles The Witch and The Ones Below, plus Charlie Kaufman’s acclaimed stop-frame animation Anomalisa.

Top 10 films March 4-6

1. London Has Fallen, £3,229,675 from 513 sites (new)

2. Hail, Caesar!, £1,520,788 from 494 sites (new)

3. Deadpool, £1,487,073 from 523 sites. Total: £34,065,741

4. Grimsby, £806,095 from 509 sites. Total: £3,567,392

5. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip, £538,303 from 528 sites. Total: £15,344,097

6. How to Be Single, £537,160 from 439 sites. Total: £4,770,825

7. The Revenant, £338,921 from 356 sites. Total: £22,496,859

8. Spotlight, £332,556 from 407 sites. Total: £5,406,837

9. Met Opera: Manon Lescaut, £279,586 from 174 sites (new)

10. The Other Side of the Door, £262,955 from 335 sites (new)

Other openers

The Choice, £139,669 from 205 sites

Truth, £26,701 from 113 sites

Hitchcock/Truffaut, £23,589 from 26 sites

Time Out of Mind, £22,442 from 37 sites

Jai Gangaajal, £20,580 from 15 sites

Maheshinte Prathikaram, £15,712 from 19 sites

Goodnight Mommy, £12,955 from 25 sites

Pokkiri Raja, £8,287 from 14 sites

Born to Be King, £2,557 from 9 sites

Loro Chi?, £504 from 5 sites

Thanks to comScore

All figures relate to takings in UK and Ireland cinemas.