‘Licorice Pizza’ slices into UK-Ireland box office as ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ enters all-time top 10

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Sony’s Spider-Man: No Way Home has entered the top 10 titles of all time at the UK-Ireland box office, as Licorice Pizza was one of several awards contenders to perform well.

No Way Home added £4.5m from 682 locations, taking a sizeable £6,534 per location on its fourth weekend in cinemas. A drop of just 26% is impressive given the prior session was during the holiday break.

The film is now up to £79.3m, and is the ninth-highest-grossing film of all time in the territory – overtaking Disney’s 2019 live-action The Lion King remake (£76m) and coming up fast on 1997’s Titanic (£80.3m).

On its current trajectory, it will finish in the range of last year’s No Time To Die, which was up to £96.4m just before Christmas.

Many titles already in cinemas posted decent holds in a promising sign for an exhibition sector afflicted by high Covid cases and a changing release schedule; although the previous weekend’s takings were affected by the New Year’s festivities.

Disney prequel The King’s Man  dropped 19% with £904,887 taking it to £5.4m.

It will finish behind the £16.6m of 2015’s Kingsman: The Secret Service and the £24.9m of 2017’s Kingsman: The Golden Circle, but that figure still represents a good second-weekend performance.

eOne’s Clifford The Big Red Dog added £623,074 – a 20% drop – to reach £7.4m from five sessions, and hold third place in the chart.

The Matrix: Resurrections dropped 32.5% on its third weekend for Warner Bros, with £513,470 taking it to £6.4m. It is significantly down on the previous franchise efforts: The Matrix with £17.4m from 1999; and The Matrix Reloaded with £33.5m and The Matrix Revolutions with £18m, both from 2003.

Having opened on Saturday January 1, Paul Thomas Anderson’s awards contender Licorice Pizza had a £436,005 first full weekend from 203 sites, at an excellent location average of £2,148. It is up to £879,373 total for distributor Universal. The weekend figure is down on the £653,429 start of Anderson’s 2018 Phantom Thread, at a £3,351 average, but this still represents a good performance in the post-pandemic climate.

Awards contenders perform well

After a slow start, Disney’s West Side Story is finding its audience, with an impressive 2% increase on its previous session. It took £404,696 on its fifth session to bring it to £5.9m total. Disney is hoping it can replicate its success at last night’s ceremony-free Golden Globes, to push bookings further into awards season.

Universal’s The 355 replicated its slow global start in the UK and Ireland, with just £366,479 from 494 sites – a location average of £742.

House Of Gucci increased its takings for the second consecutive weekend for Universal, going up a sizeable 53.7% with £214,694 on its seventh session. It has £9.1m in total.

Disney’s Encanto, which won best animated feature at the Globes, dropped 12% with £213,429 taking it to £6.6m from seven sessions.

Sony’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife  fell just 7.7% on its eighth weekend, with £118,000 bringing it to £11.3m. It is still behind the £12.4m of the 1984 first film – which would’ve been £40.8m in 2020, adjusted for inflation.

Studiocanal’s The Electrical Life of Louis Wain took £66,742 on its first full weekend, having also opened on January 1. Playing in 272 locations, it recorded a low average of £253, and has a running total of £257,708.

Vertigo Releasing’s Bifa-winning drama Boiling Point  had a decent opening, with £78,337 including previews. £42,296 of that came on its first weekend, from 52 sites at an average of £813 – a good figure for a limited-release indie title.

Altitude’s French thriller Titane went up 1.6% on its second session, with £29,269 taking it to £196,171.

A 4K restoration of Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows took £13,620 from 24 sites for BFI Distribution, at an average of £568.

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