| Rank | Film (distributor) | Three-day gross (Apr 1-3) | Total gross to date | Week |
| 1. | Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (Paramount) | £4.98m | £4.98m | 1 |
| 2. | Morbius (Sony) | £2.5m | £3.3m | 1 |
| 3. | The Bad Guys (Universal) | £1.6m | £2.3m | 1 |
| 4. | The Batman (Warner Bros) | £1.2m | £37.9m | 5 |
| 5. | Ambulance (Universal) | £273,015 | £1.2m | 2 |
GBP to USD conversion rate: 1.31
Paramount’s Sonic The Hedgehog 2 brought a welcome boost to UK-Ireland cinemas this weekend with a strong £5m opening that dominated the box office chart.
Playing in 651 locations, Sonic The Hedgehog 2 took £4.98m, at an average of £7,650.
This figure is five percent up on the £4.7m start of 2020’s Sonic The Hedgehog; and is the third-highest opening of 2022, behind only Sing 2 (£6.8m) and The Batman (£13.5m).
It is also the highest opening weekend gross for a direct videogame adaptation, topping the £4.94m of Pokemon Detective Pikachu from May 2019.
The result will be a welcome return for UK exhibitors, after a meager few weeks since the release of The Batman on March 4.
Sony’s Morbius opened to £2.5m over the weekend, playing in 640 locations, at an average of £3,906.
For genre comparison, it is slightly behind the £2.8m opening of Birds Of Prey from February 2020, which ended on £8.8m – although significantly held back by the pandemic.
It is also down on The Suicide Squad’s £3.3m start from August 2021, with that film ending on £14.8m.
After £741,000 of Thursday previews, Morbius has £3.3m in total.
Another new opener, Universal’s The Bad Guys, drove in to third place, with a Friday-Sunday weekend of £1.6m.
Playing in 618 locations, it took an average of £2,554 per site; and with £712,901 previews on the prior weekend, it has £2.3m in total so far.
Four-time number oneThe Batman moved to fourth place, dropping 27.8% with £1.2m - a decent result amongst the competition of three wide opening titles. It takes the film to £37.9m total – for superhero comparisons, ahead of 2019’s Spider-Man: Far From Home (£37.3m) and 2016’s Captain America: Civil War (£37m), and coming up on 2016’s Deadpool (£38.1m) and 2019’s Captain Marvel (£39.5m).
Michael Bay’s Ambulance held its top five spot on its second weekend for Universal, with a reasonable 47.6% drop of £273,015 taking it to £1.2m total. This is down significantly on Bay’s highest-grossing titles, including Transformers: Dark Of The Moon (£28.1m) and Armageddon (£16.5m).
Takings for the top five were at £10.5m – a massive 225.3% increase on last weekend, and the highest mark since March 14.
Worst Person, best result
For Sony, Uncharted added £223,000 on its eighth weekend – not enough to keep it in the top five, but a 36.1% hold still better than most holdovers, and contributing to an impressive £23.6m cume.
Further down the chart, Mubi’s Oscar-nominated The Worst Person In The World scored an outstanding seven percent increase on its opening weekend – a rare feat amongst independent non-English language fare.
It took £153,475 from 130 sites at an average of £1,228, and has £498,115. With word-of-mouth strong for the film, Mubi will hope to push it towards the £1m mark that very few non-English language titles achieve.
Warner Bros’ The Nan Movie dropped out of the top five on its third weekend, falling 52.6% with £137,289 taking it to £1.5m total.
Craig Roberts’ The Phantom Of The Open dropped 44.3% for eOne, with £122,000 bringing it to just shy of £1.5m from three weekends.
Sing 2 fell 44% on its 10th session, with £97,552 taking it to an excellent £32.2m. It is now 9.3% up on the £29.5m of 2017’s Sing.
Dreamz Entertainment’s Telugu-language Indian blockbuster RRR fell from its lofty third-place opening weekend perch, dropping 80% on its second session with £82,328 taking it to £895,222 overall.
Sony anime title Jujutsu Kaisen 0 added £59,000 and is up to £1.36m – a strong result for a non-English language film.
Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast is continuing its run for Universal, with £55,273 – an Oscar-assisted 2.6% increase - bringing it to £15.4m after an impressive 11 weekends in cinemas.
Animation Rabbit Academy took £39,235 from 394 locations for Signature Entertainment, for a flat average of £100.
Harry Wootliff’s drama True Things opened to £29,453 at the weekend through Picturehouse Entertainment. Playing in 67 locations, the film took a £440 average; and has £46,190 including previews.
For Entertainment Film Distributors, Ti West’s horror X added £29,094 to reach £590,761 from three weekends; while Channing Tatum’s Dog put on £17,403 for £3.4m from seven sessions.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is now at a £96.37m total, and barring any box office-boosting re-release by Sony will finish as the fourth-highest-grossing film of all time in the UK and Ireland, just shy of the £96.7m of No Time To Die from last year.
Sony also had the second weekend of horror Umma, which sits at £64,969.
BFI Distribution opened a re-release of Ingmar Bergman’s 1972 Cries & Whispers to £6,465 from 13 locations at a £497 average. From next weekend, the distributor is handling the re-release of Oscar best picture winner Coda on behalf of Apple.
Musical drama The Audition opened to £3,866 including previews from 18 locations for New Wave Films, at an average of £215.
Blue Finch Films’ horror Homebound is at £2,904 from its opening weekend, from 10 locations.
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