Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy opens big on £2.8m ($4.4m) in UK

StudioCanal’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy made a strong debut in the UK, taking £2.8m ($4.4m) (£19,642/$30,788 of which came from 2 previews) from 382 screens at an impressive screen average of £7,200 ($11,283).

The result was the newly branded StudioCanal’s biggest UK opening ahead of thriller Unknown, which took £1.4m ($2.2m) in March and is the company’s biggest grosser on £6.5m ($10.2m), a haul Thomas Alfredson’s thriller should surpass in the coming weeks.

Tinker Tailor debuted only £700,000 ($1.1m) off biggest UK independent The King’s Speech, which opened on 395 screens in January, and was £1.8m ($2.8m) ahead of most recent le Carre adaptation The Constant Gardener on its opening weekend. 

Entertainment Film Distributors’ smash comedy The Inbetweeners Movie made it five consecutive weekends over £1m ($1.6m), grossing £1.2m ($1.9m) from a week high 453 screens at an average of £2,695 ($4,224). 

The film ranks as the fourth biggest film in the UK over 12 months, having amassed £41.8m ($65.5m), and is playing on only three fewer screens than it opened on.

Sony’s Friends With Benefits and Universal’s Jane Eyre held over in third and fourth, taking modest totals of £936,025 ($1.5m) and £734,071 ($1.2m)respectively, while the latter studio’s newcomer The Change-Up fared little better on debut, managing only £727,497 ($1.1m) from 418 screens at an underwhelming average of £1,740 ($2,729).

Entertainment’s romance-comedy I Don’t How She Does It didn’t do it for the UK public, scoring only £562,609 ($882,576) from 380 screens at an average of £1,481 ($2,323), a long way off the last non-Sex And The City film starring Jessica Parker Did You Hear About The Morgans?, which debuted on £1.2m ($1.9m) from 399 sites in January 2010.

Sony’s 30 Minutes Or Less is unlikely to grace the top ten for much longer than its title suggests as it stumbled to a disappointing £260,337 ($408,605) from 261 screens at an average of £997 ($1,564) while Icon’s opener You Instead managed only £6,770 ($10,626) from 82 screens at an average of £83 ($130) per venue.

This week sees saturation releases for Warner Bros’ Crazy, Stupid, Love, Icon’s Drive, Universal’s rerelease of Jurassic Park, Entertainment’s Killer Elite and Lionsgate’s Warrior.