Lionsgate horror Imaginary opens in 516 UK-Ireland cinemas this weekend, as the first challenger to Dune: Part Two’s box office supremacy.
Directed by Jeff Wadlow who wrote the screenplay with Greg Erb and Jason Oremland, Imaginary stars DeWanda Wise as a woman who returns to her childhood home, to discover that the imaginary friend she left behind is real and unhappy at his abandonment.
It is the eighth feature from US filmmaker Wadlow, who has worked predominantly in the genre space with titles including 2018’s Truth Or Dare (opened: £931,861; closed: £2.5m) and 2020’s pandemic-afflicted Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island (£392,999; £763,958). His highest-grossing title is 2013’s Kick-Ass 2, which took £5.5m from a £2.5m start.
Imaginary is also produced by Jason Blum’s prolific Blumhouse Productions; the company’s recent run includes Night Swim, which took £1.4m in January; and 2023’s Five Night’s At Freddy’s with £10.5m.
It will be a tough ask for Imaginary or any other new title to challenge Warner Bros’ Dune: Part Two, which opened to £9.3m last time out – the biggest opening weekend since Barbie and Oppenheimer in July last year. Even a 50% drop would put Part Two at £4.6m – more than enough to keep it ahead of other titles.
Event cinema releases are looking to provide a counter-programming option to Dune’s dominance. CinemaLive is playing Titanic – The Musical in 381 cinemas this weekend. With music and lyrics by Maury Yeston, from a story and book by Peter Stone and directed by Thom Southerland, the musical tells the tragedy of the final hours of the RMS Titanic on April 14, 1912.
Twenty-six years on from its release, James Cameron’s Titanic is still the 10th -highest-grossing film of all time in the territory with £82.8m, demonstrating the enduring interest in the maritime disaster. Titanic – The Musical will play across the weekend having had its event date release on Thursday, March 7.
Trafalgar Releasing is playing its latest Met Opera title, Giuseppe Verdi’s La Forza Del Destino, in 110 venues on Saturday, March 9.
Up for the Copa
Dogwoof is releasing Rachel Ramsay and James Erskine’s documentary Copa 71 in 147 cinemas today (Friday, March 8). With the release timed to International Women’s Day, Copa 71 tells the story of the 1971 women’s football World Cup, which drew record crowds but was written out of sporting history, decades before the popularisation of the women’s game.
The film debuted in TIFF Docs at Toronto International Film Festival in September, going on to play BFI London Film Festival and AFI Fest among others. It is a debut feature for UK filmmaker Ramsay, who produced Erskine’s 2020 feature doc The End Of The Storm, about Liverpool’s men’s team and their 2019-2020 Premier League-winning season.
Also in non-fiction titles, Mubi is opening Kevin Macdonald’s High & Low: John Galliano, which examines the ascent and fall from grace of the controversial fashion designer, in 32 sites. Fashion icons Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell and Anna Wintour are among those to feature in the doc, which debuted at Telluride last summer before going on to London and Rome film festivals.
Black Bear is opening Ava DuVernay’s Origin in 119 cinemas. Originally titled Caste, the film is adapted by DuVernay from Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, and is a drama examining how America today is shaped by a historical hierarchy of human divisions.
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor leads the cast, which also includes Jon Bernthal, Niecy Nash, Finn Wittrock and Victoria Pedretti. DuVernay became the first US Black female filmmaker to have a film in Competition at Venice when Origin launched there last September; the filmmaker has spoken about the film’s omission from this year’s awards season, telling Associated Press in January it is “disappointing” but that the response from those who have seen it has been “overwhelmingly positive and connected.”
Disney continues its run of theatrical releases for titles that were moved online during the pandemic, opening Pete Docter and Kemp Powers’ Pixar animation Soul in 558 cinemas, predominantely on Saturday and Sunday.
Depicting a jazz musician who discovers what a soul is when he travels to another realm, the film won two Oscars in 2021, for best animated feature and best original score.
Sovereign Film Distribution is opening Radu Jude’s festival favourite Do Not Expect Too Much From The End Of The World in nine cinemas. The modern-day satire debuted at Locarno last summer, going on to play Toronto, London, Reykjavik, New York, Mumbai, Thessaloniki and Goteborg among others.
Further new releases include MetFilm’s Frida, an animated documentary about the iconic Mexican painter; Elliott Hasler’s Vindication Swim, a biographical drama about the first British woman to swim the English channel in the 1920s, through Nicola Pearcey’s Picnik Entertainment; and National Amusements’ animation Barbie & Stacey To The Rescue.
Park Circus is opening Jim Capobianco’s The Inventor, a stop-motion puppet animation telling the story of Leonardo da Vinci, in 92 Vue sites.
Dune: Part Two will hold its number one spot for a second weekend; with Paramount’s Bob Marley: One Love and Studicanal’s Wicked Little Letters likely to lead the chasing pack of holdovers.
No comments yet