The winner
In 2007, Universal released Hot Fuzz on 14 February, a date that had the added bonus of being both Valentine's Day and its star Simon Pegg's birthday. Four years later, it was a case of why change a winning formula, as the distributor picked the exact same release date for Paul, unfazed by the fact that on this occasion, 14 February fell on a Monday. This decision had the upside of giving Paul four whole days of previews, boosting its opening "weekend" box office (in fact a whole week) to £5.52m. Pegg tweeted that this figure represented the biggest opening of the year so far – true, but not the whole story. While Paul's numbers were inflated by £2.31m from those Monday-Thursday previews, a few weeks ago Disney's Tangled managed to debut with £5.11m earned purely from the Friday-Sunday weekend period.
Still, you've got to hand it to Paul: the film delivered a strong opening, not far behind the debut numbers of Hot Fuzz (£5.92m, including £1.56m from two days of previews). Many industry observers thought Paul – with its geeky alien plotline – would prove somewhat resistible to females, making it a tougher sell to the date-movie crowd. On top of that, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz director Edgar Wright was not on board this time, while the Pegg brand was looking a little tarnished by the likes of How to Lose Friends and Alienate People and Burke & Hare.
Paul's success looks even more impressive when compared to the opening last August of Wright's pricey-looking Scott Pilgrim Vs the World: £1.60m, including £528,000 in previews. Pegg's last movie Burke & Hare debuted last Halloween with £943,000 including £178,000 in previews. Co-star Nick Frost's over-budgeted The Boat That Rocked began its life in April 2009 with £1.80m including £471,000 in previews.
Paul arrived during a highly competitive time at the box office, with seven pictures achieving weekend grosses of £1m-plus. Although it hardly faced a direct rival, there are nevertheless plenty of alternative attractive choices for cinemagoers.
The holiday bonanza
The start of the February half-term holiday helped several family films deliver strong holds, with Gnomeo and Juliet, Yogi Bear and Tangled experiencing gentle falls of 24%, 25% and 34% respectively. All these titles should continue to perform well over the next seven days. Disney's Tangled has already grossed over £15m, as against a lifetime total of just over £11m for last year's The Princess and the Frog.
PG-rated Martin Lawrence sequel Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son may also have benefited from the start of the school holiday: it debuted with £1.43m, including £194,000 in previews. The previous entry in the series, Big Momma's House 2, debuted five years ago with £1.74m.
The phenomenon
Declining just 15% – the lowest fall of any film in the chart – The King's Speech managed impressive seventh-weekend takings of £1.69m, the biggest number for a film's seventh frame since Avatar a year ago. With cumulative takings now standing at £37.13m, Tom Hooper's multiple Bafta-winner has in the last seven days sailed past the lifetime totals of Up, Ice Age III, Inception, Men in Black, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, Die Another Day and Love Actually, in the process nabbing 37th place in the all-time UK chart.
The merest hint of a black spot is that compared to Slumdog Millionaire's heroic run two years ago, the film is showing some signs of fatigue. In the early days, The King's Speech was posting successive weekend tallies that were 75-80% above the equivalent numbers achieved by Slumdog. But its sixth weekend was only 9% ahead of the equivalent frame in Slumdog's run, and its seventh is just 8% ahead of the Slumdog number (£1.69m v £1.56m).
On the other hand, total earnings continue to tell a healthier story, with The King's Speech's tally an impressive 62% ahead of Slumdog at this stage in its run. While that margin has been gradually ebbing lately, and will almost certainly erode further, even if the film only manages a 50% improvement on Slumdog's lifetime total, that will be a stunning £47.5m for The King's Speech, and a place in the all-time chart between Jurassic Park and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. It's hard to imagine its distributor and backers being too disappointed with a result like that.
The disappointment
Even a few months ago, an £821,000 opening for a concert documentary about Justin Bieber might have sounded pretty impressive. But after Never Say Never's US debut of $29.51m, that UK result looks anti-climactic. Going by rule of thumb, a UK opening close to £3m might have been expected, although Bieber fever never looked as strong here as it is in North America. The 48% drop in takings from Saturday to Sunday is a particularly inauspicious sign, suggesting that the film reached its primary audience on the first two days of release, and has now got nowhere much to go. Repeat business from hardcore Beliebers over the half-term holiday may come to the rescue.
A documentary of a very different stripe – Charles Ferguson's analysis of the recent financial crisis, Inside Job – was buoyed by strong reviews to a healthy £70,000 debut from 22 screens. The resulting site average of £3,199 compares with Never Say Never's £2,115.
The future
Thanks to the arrival of Paul, several strong holds, and the start of the school holiday, the market overall was an impressive 17% up on the previous (already healthy) weekend, and an even better 37% up on the equivalent frame from 2010, when Avatar topped the chart in its 10th week, and The Lovely Bones provided the highest new entry. Over the past year, the current frame has been bettered only five times: the first two weekends of Toy Story 3, the openings of the latest instalments of the Harry Potter and Twilight franchises, and last Easter, when Clash of the Titans, How to Train Your Dragon and Kick-Ass all arrived together. This weekend, fresh energy should arrive from complementary titles No Strings Attached, I Am Number Four, Drive Angry and The Rite, while arthouses will be served by West is West, Animal Kingdom, Howl and Waste Land. With the Oscars ceremony occurring on Sunday, the frame should prove something of a last hurrah for many of the awards movies – after that, only big winners are likely to command much audience attention.
Top 10 films
1. Paul, £5,517,121 from 429 sites (New)
2. Gnomeo & Juliet, £2,223,978 from 479 sites. Total: £6,373,301
3. The King's Speech, £1,685,180 from 507 sites. Total: £37,127,599
4. True Grit, £1,466,979 from 377 sites. Total: £4,558,297
5. Big Mommas: Like Father Like Son, £1,433,778 from 380 sites (New)
6. Yogi Bear, £1,370,585 from 467 sites. Total: £3,862,364
7. Tangled, £1,295,709 from 533 sites. Total: £15,347,419
8. Just Go With It, £984,355 from 349 sites. Total: £3,766,707
9. Justin Bieber: Never Say Never, £820,592 from 388 sites (New)
10. Black Swan, £693,332 from 444 sites. Total: £14,277,599
Other openers
Inside Job, 22 screens, £70,375
7 Khoon Maaf, 23 screens, £47,616
Day for Night, 2 screens, £9,107
Confessions, 7 screens, £8,084
