The winner

Hype and hubris have damaged Interstellar. If it had been the true event movie its press and marketing set it up as, it would have beaten animation Big Hero 6 to the US top spot. Instead, $46.7m makes it director Christopher Nolan’s weakest opening since 2006’s The Prestige. The reasons: a November release that preps the film for awards season, but remote from the big-money summer slots; the 169-minute run time; and a fortnight of intensive press coverage designed to butter up Nolan’s reputation as the mainstream king of our times, but which has sown the seeds of a backlash.



Overseas box-office takings of $82.9m (£52.3m) looks like an ample makeweight, containing the expected array of No 1 openings, including a beefy $14.1m in South Korea that puts it in the country’s top 10 highest ever. But considering the scale of the rollout – 63 territories – $83m is middling for a film that thinks it belongs in the A-league. The two films in the year’s current top five that opened lower overseas – Guardians of the Galaxy ($66.4m from 32 markets) and Captain America: The Winter Soldier ($75.2m from 27 markets) – would have easily beaten Interstellar if they’d set up shop in an equivalent number of territories. In terms of November openings, Interstellar is short of something like The Matrix Revolutions, whose initial overseas take was $117.6m in 2003 – though franchise branding surely played a part there.

The film-show team review Interstellar Guardian

Bluntly put, Interstellar opted to play high stakes, leveraging a massive opening at an off-peak time of year on the back of Nolan’s august reputation. The danger is that the film hasn’t lived up to it, and that drop-off could now be steep, with China (12 Nov) and Japan (22 Nov) the only major markets in reserve. Gravity, Interstellar’s main autumn-release comparison point, opened fairly quietly abroad ($28.4m), but a gradually widening rollout saw word-of-mouth about its groundbreaking visuals build that figure week by week. In its favour, Interstellar has been tracking strongly among the over-25s who might watch the film at their leisure in the coming weeks. But it seems unlikely to kindle Gravity’s repeat-business spark, which took it to $716.4m worldwide, or to match Nolan’s $825.5m for Inception in 2010. $500m-ish looks like a better bet. Fun historical fact: Interstellar’s mothership film 2001: A Space Odyssey managed close to that just in US domestic on its original release, if you correct for inflation ($56.9m/$389.2m adjusted).



The runner-up

Cute challenger Big Hero 6. Photograph: Disney/LFI/Photoshot

Disney can be proud of more than just keeping Interstellar in its rear-view mirror. Its new animation, Big Hero 6, is its second-best non-Pixar opening ($56.2m), behind the all-conquering Frozen, which built on a good-but-not-spectacular $67.4m start to become the most successful animated film ever. Big Hero 6, the 23rd best debut for a CGI animation, draws on the back catalogue of Marvel characters the studio now has at its disposal for its tale of prodigy Hiro Hamada, his inflatable robot sidekick, and the superhero squad they assemble. Looking at Big Hero 6’s wider prospects, Frozen’s $1.27bn worldwide gross is probably setting the bar too high. But if the film can connect even half as much in Japan – to whom its anime stylings are surely beckoning – then $500m-plus and a place in the yearly top 10 is eminently achievable. No 1 openings this past weekend in the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia bode well for its Asian prospects, with Cambodia, Malaysia and Singapore coming next frame, in advance of a long rollout stretching into 2015.



Still not Gone

Ben Affleck talks about Gone Girl Guardian

David Fincher’s Gone Girl has passed $300m globally, a testimony to undeniable staying power in the key developed-world territories most in tune with its modern-marriage autopsy, like the UK ($33.4m and counting), Australia ($20.7m), France and South Korea (where it rose by 6.5% on its second weekend). Fincher broke his own US domestic record some time ago, and is now within touching distance of a worldwide personal best, tantalisingly at hand with Japanese (12 Dec) and Italian (18 Dec) bows to come. Not bad at all, considering Gone Girl doesn’t quite boast Se7en’s ($327.3m) shock factor (nor an emerging Brad Pitt) and, unlike the family-friendly The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ($333.9m), is an 18 certificate. Pass those two, and Fincher will be nesting behind the far-more-expensive End of Tomorrow and Noah in the end-of-year list – perhaps the only non-youth/young adult title in the top 25. Life of Pi ($609m, 11th place) and Wolf of Wall Street ($392m, 17th place) managed a similar feat in 2012 and 2013.



The rest of the world

Three Chinese releases propped up the lower reaches of this week’s chart. K-pop idol Rain, previously seen in the Wachowski siblings’ Speed Racer and Ninja Assassin, made his Chinese film debut opposite Liu Yifei in rich-kids romance For Love or Money. That brought in $4.8m, well behind Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, still lodged in that country’s top spot. Donnie Yen’s Kung Fu Jungle – also playing in Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand and elsewhere – added another $4m (16th globally) to bring it to $14m; it seems destined to be minor Yen, unless it gets a US release, where martial arts reliably brings in the African-American crowd. Suspense thriller The Boundary Line crept in 17th globally, with $2.7m at the weekend; it follows a pair of men – one played by Vincent Zhao, who replaced Jet Li in the Once Upon a Time in China series – stumbling on a dark secret while tracking down missing loved ones.



The future

Penguins of Madagascar. Photograph: 20th Century Fox

Interstellar pops out of the wormhole midweek in China, not only eager to reinforce Christopher Nolan’s international push, but also – as one of the country’s annual quota of 14 Imax/3D releases – top up this week’s $20.9m Imax takings (a November record). But cute things could plague it there, too: Madagascar spin-off Penguins of Madagascar opens early on the 14th to avoid the December local-film deluge, and the last Madagascar did a decent $31m in China. Johnnie To’s romantic comedy sequel Don’t Go Breaking My Heart 2 – a change from the director’s usual gangster fare – also enters the fray. The sole big international opening is the return of Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels as knuckle-dragging duo Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne in Dumb and Dumber To, unspooling in about 30 markets, including the US. It’s been an unbelievable 20 years since the original: a test for the new franchise and for Carrey, who hasn’t fronted a major hit since 2003’s Bruce Almighty.

Top 10 global box office, 7-9 November

1. (New) Interstellar, $129.6m from 63 territories – 63.9% international; 36.1% US

2. Big Hero 6, $63.8m from 18 territories. $79.2m cumulative – 29% int; 81% US

3. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, $17.6m from 25 territories. $464.1m cum – 58.9% int; 41.1% US

4. Gone Girl, $14.8m from 44 territories. $303.8m cum – 52.1% int; 47.9% US

5. The Maze Runner, $12.9m from 34 territories. $324.6m cum – 69.5% int; 30.5% US

6. Fury, $12.5m from 45 territories. $120.8m cum – 42.6% int; 57.4% US

7. Ouija, $9.2m from 20 territories. $56.8m cum – 23.4% int; 76.6% US

8. Dracula Untold, $7.4m from 62 territories. $202.6m cum – 72.9% int; 27.1% US

9. Annabelle, $7.3m from 59 territories. $244m cum – 65.8% int; 34.2% US

10. Nightcrawler, $6.5m from 8 territories. $23.8m cum – 16.8% int; 83.2% US

• Thanks to Rentrak. Some of this week’s figures are based on estimates; all historical figures unadjusted, unless otherwise stated.



• This article was amended on 12 November 2014. In the original, it was stated that Interstellar was Christopher Nolan’s lowest opening since Insomnia. This has been corrected.