‘1917’ storms UK box office with £7.3m opening

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1917 1

Source: Dreamworks Pictures/Universal Pictures

‘1917’

Rank	Film (Distributor)	Three-day gross (Jan 10-12)	Total gross to date	Week
1	1917 (eOne)	£7.3m	£7.4m	1
2	Little Women (Sony)	£2m	£13.2m	3
3	Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker (Disney)	£1.9m	£54.9m	4
4	The Gentlemen (Entertainment Film Distribution)	£1.71m	£6m	2
5	Jumanji: The Next Level (Sony)	£1.68m	£31m	5

GBP to USD conversation rate: 1.30

eOne

Sam Mendes’ First World War epic 1917 has stormed the UK box office, with a £7.3m opening weekend taking it to the top spot.

The feature took £7.4m including previews; it played in 684 locations, grossing £10,731 per location.

1917 won best motion picture – drama at the Golden Globes the weekend before last, and has a strong haul of 10 Oscar nominations including best picture and best director. It is currently second-favourite to win the best picture prize with most bookmakers.

£7.3m represents an excellent result for eOne. It is the company’s biggest opening weekend outside of four of the five Twilight films (it passes the £2.5m opening of 2008’s first title Twilight).

The amount is not the highest for Mendes; that still belongs to James Bond title Skyfall, which opened to a stunning £20.2m in October 2012. It is also surpassed by the £20m of Mendes’ second Bond instalment Spectre in 2015, and the £10m opening of Christopher Nolan’s World War Two film Dunkirk in July 2017.

Sony

Greta Gerwig’s Little Women fell only 24%, grossing £2m on its third weekend. This was enough to lift it past both Disney’s Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker and fellow Sony title Jumanji: The Next Level. It has now grossed £13.2m in total, more than double the total of Gerwig’s 2017 Lady Bird (£5.6m).

With six Oscar nominations including best picture, best supporting actress for Florence Pugh and best adapted screenplay for Gerwig – although she was not chosen in best director – Sony will look for the awards buzz to carry it to an even stronger result.

Despite falling below Little Women, Jumanji: The Next Level still took a decent £1.7m, a 45.8% drop. It now has an impressive £31m and has an outside shot of catching the first film’s £38.5m.

Disney

Star Wars: The Return Of Skywalker dropped 58% on its fourth weekend with £1.9m taking it to £54.9m total. That makes it the 28^th highest-grossing film of all-time in the UK, and the fifth highest-grossing UK release of 2019.

Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit, which scored six Oscar nominations for Disney, fell a reasonable 31.3% on its second session with £1m taking it to £4.3m total.

Frozen II, which did not make the best animated feature nomination selection, added £776,000 on its eighth weekend and now has £51.3m in total. It is 2019’s sixth highest-grossing release.

Spies In Disguise added £680,000 on its third weekend, a 38.2% drop, and has £5.2m in total.

Bollywood drama Chhapaak opened to £88,000 from 45 locations for a decent £1,956 location average.

Entertainment Film Distribution

The Gentlemen

Source: Miramax

‘The Gentlemen’

Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen held well on its second session, dropping just 21.1% with £1.7m taking it to £6m in total. Despite not featuring in the awards conversation, the film may benefit as a counter-programming title in the coming weeks.

Universal

The much-maligned Cats dropped 56.6% on its previous session with £434,088 taking it to £11.2m. It will end as director Tom Hooper’s third highest-grossing film to date, behind The King’s Speech (£45.7m) and Les Misérables (£40.8m).

Benedict Andrews’ political thriller Seberg starring Kristen Stewart as Jean Seberg took £37,460 on its opening weekend, with a total of £47,474 including previews.

Lionsgate

Knives Out, which scored a best original screenplay nomination for writer-director Rian Johnson, added £343,774 to its total, which stands at £12.2m after seven weekends.

Paramount

Playing With Fire fell 53.8% on its third weekend with £240,000 taking it to £2.4m.

Blue Story, the directorial debut of Screen Star of Tomorrow 2019 Rapman, is still in select cinemas after an impressive eight weekends, adding £18,000 to bring its total to £4.5m.