Jake Gyllenhaal cop drama was the only film to deliver a gross in excess of £1m, though Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine sneaked a nifty total to become his biggest ever opener
• Read Mark Kermode's review of Prisoners
• Read the archive of Charles Gant's UK box office reports
The winner
Late September, rarely a robust time for UK cinemagoing, continues the seasonally becalmed pattern. Overall, the 27-29 September session represented the third worst weekend for box office in the past year. Given that the previous frame delivered the second worst, it's clear just how sluggish the market is right now.
The only film delivering a weekend gross in excess of £1m was Prisoners, starring Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal. Aside from the previous weekend, when Rush held on to the top spot with £1.34m, Prisoners' £1.37m tally is the lowest for a No 1 film since Dredd landed at the chart summit in September 2012.
It's the third leading role for Jackman so far this year, and his third chart topper, following Les Misérables (debut of £8.13m) and The Wolverine (£4.69m, including £939,000 in previews). Gyllenhaal was last seen in End of Watch, which kicked off with £619,000 last November.
The personal best
Plenty of smiles on faces at Warner Bros's London HQ this week, as the company reports that Blue Jasmine is Woody Allen's biggest ever opener in the UK. With £793,000 from the Friday-Sunday period, and £834,000 including previews, this compares with previous best Match Point's £752,000 debut. Other notable strong starts for Woody pictures include Midnight in Paris (£496,000) and Vicky Cristina Barcelona, (£244,000) although the latter was launched on a small platform then expanded in its second weekend, when it grossed £577,000. Allen's biggest UK cumulative total to date is Midnight in Paris's £2.79m, so Warners will be hoping to push Blue Jasmine past that tally.
The director's last film, To Rome with Love, kicked off in the UK with £141,000 from 107 screens. Midnight in Paris was launched in 153 venues, and Vicky Cristina Barcelona achieved 175 locations at its widest point. Blue Jasmine was rolled out at the weekend into 188 cinemas, achieving a sturdy average of £4,435.
The flops
To nobody's real surprise, quirky US comedy Girl Most Likely landed with a thump outside the top 10, with a poor £91,000 from 176 cinemas, and a £516 average. Despite appealing lead actor Kristen Wiig, and an ensemble including Annette Bening, Matt Dillon and Glee's Darren Criss, the film never looked a likely winner. But the result is a spectacular triumph when compared to that of Austenland, which arrived with a dismal £12,400 from 94 venues, delivering a £135 average. The cast includes Keri Russell and Jennifer Coolidge.
In this context, the box office for glossy gambling thriller Runner Runner, starring Justin Timberlake and Ben Affleck, qualifies as merely lacklustre: £765,000 from 433 cinemas.
September champ
Among September releases, Ron Howard's motor racing drama Rush crosses the finish line in first place with £6.54m, ahead of Richard Curtis's About Time (£6.26m) and Insidious 2 (£6.02m). Rush debuted mid-September in second place, behind Insidious 2 (£2.10m v £2.88m), rising to the chart summit a week later, and then slipping back a notch in its third week of play. Declines in box office are a relatively modest 36% and 26%. As for About Time, that's just ahead of the cumulative total of Curtis's previous feature, The Boat That Rocked, and with a bit more life in it still.
The local hit
Arriving in the rest of the UK this Friday, Filth has already landed in Scottish cinemas, where the weekend saw the Irvine Welsh adaptation achieve a nifty £248,000 from 38 cinemas, delivering a strong site average of £6,523. That's a massive improvement on the result of the last film adapted from a book by the Scottish author: Irvine Welsh's Ecstasy debuted in April 2012, with £26,500 from 56 venues. Distributor Lionsgate will be hoping for further cheer south of the border this weekend, but in Scotland it faces a particular challenge from Proclaimers musical Sunshine on Leith, albeit significantly different in audience profile and appeal.
The foreign-language hit
Despite never having cracked the box-office top 10 – or in fact the top 15 – on any weekend, Paolo Sorrentino's The Great Beauty has quietly been mopping up the arthouse audience, providing one of 2013's rare foreign-language hits. The latest frame, the film's fourth, has delivered another £50,000, taking the cumulative total to £610,000. This is already more than five times the film's opening weekend gross (£117,000), and is also the third best non-Bollywood foreign-language result of the year so far, behind Pedro Almodóvar's I'm So Excited (£848,000) and François Ozon's In the House (£827,000). Other foreign-language successes this year include Wadjda (£387,000), No (£346,000), Populaire (£343,000) and Lore (£300,000), but overall it hasn't been a strong year for foreign films. In 2012, Untouchable, Headhunters and The Raid all cleared £1m.
The Great Beauty benefited from a Sleeper award from the British Film Institute's Distribution Fund, a relatively recent innovation devised to help specialised titles reach a wider audience throughout the regions, and only bestowed after the opening weekend has already demonstrated proven appetite for a film. In the case of The Great Beauty, it has helped sustain advertising spend, as well as an expansion from the initial 25 sites.
The survivor
Back in the top 10 (up from number 15) in its 12th week of release, Monsters University continues its solidly achieving run after a wobbly start. With £29.77m so far, the animated prequel has achieved a hefty 8.6 times its £3.46m opening tally – definitely the highest multiple for any of this summer's major releases. In the all-time league table for animation, Monsters University has recently overtaken Shrek (£29m), A Bug's Life (£29.45m), Chicken Run (£29.51m) and Ice Age 2 (£29.61m). It's the sixth most successful Pixar film of all time at the UK box office, behind Toy Story 3, Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc, Finding Nemo and Up.
The future
Despite the current box-office doldrums, takings are in fact only 11% down on the equivalent weekend from 2012, when Looper arrived at the chart summit with £2.43m. Now cinemas are pinning hopes on Proclaimers musical Sunshine on Leith, which may not be in the Mamma Mia! league of massive popular appeal, but could well prove an effectively feelgood sleeper hit, especially with robust marketing support from its instinctively populist distributor Entertainment Films. Kevin Macdonald's How I Live Now, from Meg Rosoff's young adult novel, is also hard to call, as is the full UK expansion of Filth. Thrown into the mix are sex-addiction comedy drama Thanks for Sharing, with Gwyneth Paltrow, and raunchy teen comedy The To Do List, with Aubrey Plaza.
Top 10 films
1. Prisoners, £1,365,527 from 400 sites (New)
2. Rush, £987,549 from 512 sites. Total: £6,537,752
3. Blue Jasmine, £833,798 from 188 sites (New)
4. Runner Runner, £764,886 from 433 sites (New)
5. Insidious 2, £572,554 from 423 sites. Total: £6,023,282
6. About Time, £485,780 from 409 sites. Total: £6,263,595
7. White House Down, £441,591 from 360 sites. Total: £3,322,184
8. Justin and the Knights of Valour, £433,467 from 472 sites. Total: £1,983,570
9. Diana, £272,065 from 489 sites. Total: £1,387,184
10. Monsters University, £271,863 from 389 sites. Total: £29,768,407
Other openers
Filth, 38 sites, £247,860
Girl Most Likely, 176 sites, £90,810
Raja Rani, 17 sites, £55,023
Hannah Arendt, 12 sites, £18,857
The Wicker Man, £11 sites, £14,817 (reissue)
Austenland, 92 sites, £12,384
In the Name Of, three sites, £5,267
Daivathinte Swantham Cleetus, 10 sites, £4,652
Mister John, seven sites, £4,022
Aashiqui Not Allowed, 11 sites, £3,851
Nothing But a Man, three sites, £2,891 (reissue)
Warning, one site, £2,278
Greedy Lying Bastards, one site, £122
Thanks to Rentrak
• Read the archive of Charles Gant's UK box office reports
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