The winner
Six years in development and the subject of a radical downsizing from an initial £8m production budget, Nick Love's The Sweeney has finally come up smelling of roses. Eventually made for just £3m – £1m of which was sucked up in development and financing costs – the update on the 1970s TV classic has landed at the top of the UK box office, with a healthy £1.55m, including £433,000 earned on Wednesday and Thursday. Even discounting those preview takings, that's more than Dredd earned from its debut the previous weekend (£1.05m). UK distribution rights alone for Dredd are rumoured to have cost significantly more than The Sweeney's entire production budget.
Even with the preview takings stripped out, The Sweeney has taken nearly double the box office of Love's next best debut, Outlaw, which kicked off its run in 2007 with £582,000 from 286 cinemas. It's also a nice recovery after his last film The Firm began its run in 2009 with a disappointing £310,000 from 265 venues. Theatrical box office has always been somewhat lacklustre for Love pictures, which have traditionally found their audience on DVD – The Football Factory shifted more than 1m units in the UK – so the director and his partners at Vertigo will be happy to see The Sweeney deliver his first £1m opening in cinemas.
Taking the edge off this success is the fact that The Sweeney sits at the top of the UK box office only thanks to distributor eOne's previews strategy. Over the three-day weekend period, top title is 3D animation ParaNorman, with £1.39m. The film comes from stop-motion house Laika, in association with Universal/Focus Pictures – their last effort, Coraline, debuted in 2009 with £2.43m including £1.06m in previews. Discounting the preview takings, the opening tallies for Coraline and ParaNorman are almost identical.
The recoveries
Dredd, Lawless and Anna Karenina, which saw their opening numbers softened by sunshine the previous weekend, all posted decent-to-strong holds. Most impressive of the trio is Anna Karenina, down just 7%, for a 10-day total of £2.73m. That tiny decline will be a big comfort to distributor Universal, which can now hope for a reasonably long life for the period romance. Given the radical theatrical staging of Joe Wright's Tolstoy adaptation, affection from the traditionally conservative costume-drama audience was by no means a given. John Hillcoat's Prohibition-era crime saga dipped a mild 11%, and even Dredd, which as a genre film based on a comic strip was always likely to see a front-loaded audience, fell a moderate 27%.
The other notable stayer in the top 10 is Brave, with a slim 10% drop. The Pixar animation is the 11th film to pass the £20m barrier in the UK this year, and is only the second to do so (the other is Ted) among titles that are not based on a previous film, comic, stage play or book.
The losers
Although by no means a disaster, Hope Springs, with £729,000 from 417 cinemas, must be seen as a moderate disappointment. The chief selling point is Meryl Streep, and it's questionable whether Steve Carell or Tommy Lee Jones added much value for the target audience of older females. Streep enjoyed a £2.15m debut earlier this year with The Iron Lady, although that film's subject was also a key marketable asset. Despite a significantly higher production budget ($85m v $30m for Hope Springs), a more relevant comparison might be dating comedy It's Complicated, which kicked off its run with £1.10m from 434 cinemas at the start of 2010. In the case of Hope Springs, a storyline involving a married couple that has stopped having sex may have proved too close to home for potential audiences similar in age to the characters depicted.
Landing outside the top 10 despite rollouts on more than 100 screens, bike-courier thriller Premium Rush and Woody Allen comedy To Rome with Love both represent significant disappointments. With £115,000 from 159 screens, and a site average of just £726, the Joseph Gordon-Levitt picture may have suffered from a reined-in marketing spend, with distributor Sony not wishing to bet the farm on a film that might more naturally find an audience on DVD. As for To Rome with Love, its £141,000 from 107 sites delivered a healthier average (£1,318), but the numbers are well down on Midnight in Paris, which kicked off its run with £496,000 from 153 locations. Allen's previous film, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, debuted weakly with £112,000 from 101 cinemas.
The arthouse battle
With crossover titles such as Anna Karenina, Lawless, Hope Springs and To Rome with Love targeting upscale cinemagoers, the market is tough for arthouse fare. The Imposter dropped 44% from the previous weekend, but with a total of £987,000 it has now overtaken Marley as the top non-concert documentary of 2012. Below it, Samsara and Berberian Sound Studio are still neck and neck with totals of £125,000, although the latter witnessed an alarming 68% drop from the previous weekend, suggesting audience affection has not matched critical adulation. The same might be said for Tabu, which is performing about the same as documentary The Queen of Versailles, despite benefiting from significantly more critical excitement.
About Elly, receiving a belated release after the success of Asghar Farhadi's A Separation, was the top performer at London's Curzon Soho, with £6,114, but results out of London were less sensational, and its weekend total in four screens is £9,816.
But top foreign language title overall is Barfi! – depicting the romantic travails of a deaf-mute man (Ranbir Kapoor). With £230,000 from 64 cinemas, yielding the highest weekend average (£3,592) of any film on release, the result is actually nothing special for the consistently high-performing Bollywood sector.
The future
Grosses bounced back 26% from the previous, sun-blighted weekend, but are nevertheless 8% down on the 2011 equivalent frame, when Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy entered at the chart summit. Cinemas are now braced for a fresh onslaught of product. Brad Pitt adds considerable star power to Andrew Dominik's violent thriller Killing Them Softly, while photogenic trio Aaron Johnson, Taylor Kitsch and Blake Lively should help snag older teens and 20somethings for Oliver Stone's sex/drugs/kidnap flick Savages. A similar demographic will be targeted by horror House at the End of the Street, starring The Hunger Games' Jennifer Lawrence. Tween and young teen females will be courted by cancer weepie Now Is Good, starring Dakota Fanning and Jeremy Irvine. Gently comedic true story Untouchable, already a huge hit in its native France and much of Europe, will skew older.
Those five new entrants together represent a formidable force, but period romance Hysteria, starring Hugh Dancy and Maggie Gyllenhaal, will try to dig its own niche; ditto Brit survival thriller Tower Block, with Jack O'Connell and Sheridan Smith. Raiders of the Lost Ark should clean up at the nation's Imax cinemas.
Top 10 films
1. The Sweeney, £1,545,294 from 406 sites (New)
2. ParaNorman, £1,393,123 from 480 sites (New)
3. Anna Karenina, £813,395 from 495 sites. Total: £2,731,426
4. Lawless, £790,378 from 406 sites. Total: £2,575,336
5. Dredd, £769,381 from 415 sites. Total: £2,725,180
6. Hope Springs, £728,689 from 417 sites (New)
7. Brave, £584,321 from 515 sites. Total: £20,138,592
8. Total Recall, £472,232 from 368 sites. Total: £4,918,739
9. The Possession, £346,642 from 278 sites. Total: £2,856,003
10. Ted, £317,035 from 267 sites. Total: £29,847,210
Other openers
Barfi!, 64 sites, £229,882
To Rome with Love, 107 sites, £141,008
Premium Rush, 159 sites, £115,357
When the Lights Went Out, 21 sites, £21,189 (+ £5,056 previews)
About Elly, 4 sites, £9,816 (+ £667 previews)
Sundarapandian, 3 sites, £5,019
The Snows of Kilimanjaro, 5 sites, £3,901
Keyhole, 3 sites, £966
Anton Corbijn: Inside Out, 2 sites, £332
