The winner

Ever since The Avengers took Marvel's premier film franchise to a whole new level of box-office success, the spillover for all the characters has been evident. Both Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World were significantly bigger than the predecessor titles, and now comes the turn of Captain America with sequel The Winter Soldier. Posting a five-day UK debut of £6.04m including previews of £1.85m, the film has openedwith more than double the £2.98m achieved by Captain America: The First Avenger in the last weekend of July 2011. Strip out those previews, however, and The Winter Soldier is a more modest 41% up on the first Captain America film.

The Winter Soldier has achieved the second-biggest opening of 2014 so far, behind The Lego Movie's debut of £8.05m including £2.16m in previews. Stripping out previews, Winter Soldier also falls behind the opening salvo of The Wolf of Wall Street (£4.66m).

The arrival of Captain America into a relatively becalmed market ensures that the current chart is the most polarised of any in 2014. Back in the second frame of January, 12 Years a Slave topped the chart with weekend box-office that was exactly five times the number earned by 10th-placed Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones. In the frame just ended, in contrast, takings for The Winter Soldier are 56 times those of 10th-placed A Long Way Down.

Captain America: The First Avenger took only £9.48m throughout the course of its run, and Winter Soldier should sail past that tally this coming weekend. If it decays at the same rate as Thor: The Dark World (which debuted with £8.67m including £3.10m in previews), it should reach a cumulative total around £14m. However, the coming Easter holiday could see a strong sustain for The Winter Soldier, pushing it to greater heights.

The runner-up

With £2.21m including previews from the previous weekend of £1.03m, Muppets Most Wanted lands in second place. The number is a disappointment, since the original reboot The Muppets kicked off with £2.65m without the benefit of previews back in February 2012. A strong run saw The Muppets reach a healthy £16.8m, and Most Wanted will almost certainly see an uptick when the Easter school holiday begins. Competition for the lucrative family market comes from Rio 2, which previewed at the weekend, doubtless taking cash away from Kermit and Miss Piggy.

The survivor

Dropping by the smallest margin of any film in the top 10, The Grand Budapest Hotel falls to number three, right back where it started when it arrived in early March. The Wes Anderson caper has now reached £7.97m in box-office, and is virtually certain to catch Fantastic Mr Fox (£9.19m) to become Anderson's biggest ever hit at UK cinemas.

Secret Cinema's presentation of Budapest, which has been extended to 6 April, looks set to deliver around £650,000 of box-office, which should represent around 7% of the film's final total. If the revenue split of the £53.50 ticket price strongly favours Secret Cinema – which after all has significant installation and staffing costs to deliver the value-added experience to customers – then inclusion of the full box-office revenue in Budapest's official tally paints a slightly misleading picture.

When Grand Budapest Hotel first landed in the chart, it was beaten by fellow debutant 300: Rise of an Empire by a margin of £1.27m. But slow and steady wins the race, and the Wes Anderson flick is now more than £500,000 ahead of the historical actioner.

The flop

Released into 276 cinemas, The Legend of Hercules proved an unsurprising flop, grossing just £190,000 for a screen average of £688. Having underperformed in the US back in January, where it grossed a poor $19m, the film was not made available to UK critics ahead of release. Outlets including the Guardian dispatched its reviewer on the day of opening, and the film currently has a 22/100 Metacritic score and a 4.2/10 IMDb user rating.

The encore phenomenon

With various titles seeing their box-office plummeting by alarming amounts, steady takings for encore showings of the National Theatre's War Horse sees the filmed play move back to number 12 in the weekend chart, its highest placing to date. War Horse has now grossed a stunning £2.61m after five weeks of play, and has added more than £1m since its live debut on Thursday 27 February. The thriving event-cinema industry will be paying close attention to see how long it can keep chugging away.

It may be somewhat galling for distributors of current arthouse fare that encore showings of a filmed play are winning wider bookings and bigger audiences than their own fresh releases. Asghar Farhadi's The Past, which rolled into 31 cinemas, grossed a decent £66,000 from 31 screens, while Oscar-winning documentary 20 Feet from Stardom kicked off with £62,000 from a wider 65 venues. Farhadi's A Separation kicked off with £56,000 from 23 cinemas back in July 2011, ultimately powering its way to £355,000 thanks to strong word of mouth.

Admissions update

Reporting of cinema admissions – the number of actual tickets sold – always lags significantly behind the release of box-office grosses, but the stats for February are finally available. A 3% rise on February 2013 paints a rosy picture for UK cinemas, although this is not enough to neutralise the 12% shortfall (from exceptionally high 2013 levels) for the month of January. Hopes are pinned on March and April to catch up, as these months were relatively flat in 2013.

The future

Despite the arrival of the Captain America sequel, weekend box-office takings still proved 13% behind the equivalent frame from 2013, when greater strength across the market buoyed a session led by The Croods. Easter came earlier in the calendar last year, so more strong titles released at an earlier point. Now we are set to play catch-up, with the arrival on Friday of animation Rio 2, young adult novel adaptation Divergent and Darren Aronofsky's much-anticipated Noah. Divergent has already proved a sizable hit in the US, while Noah has scored in the US, Mexico, South Korea, Russia and Australia. Rio 2 has hit big in Brazil and Russia. All three films are joined in the UK this weekend by Richard Ayoade's The Double, starring Jesse Eisenberg and Mia Wasikowska.

Top 10 films

1. Captain America: The Winter Soldier, £6,037,850 from 535 sites (New)
2. Muppets Most Wanted, £2,214,906 from 513 sites (New)
3. The Grand Budapest Hotel, £870,423 from 434 sites. Total: £7,968,357
4. Non-Stop, £360,226 from 328 sites. Total: £8,745,562
5. Need for Speed, £337,943 from 395 sites. Total: £4,399,097
6. The Lego Movie, £323,397 from 458 sites. Total: £31,636,562
7. 300: Rise of an Empire, £237,879 from 295 sites. Total: £7,449,264
8. Starred Up, £201,822 from 283 sites. Total: £1,062,827
9. The Legend of Hercules, £189,881 from 276 sites (New)
10. A Long Way Down, £107,538 from 284 sites. Total: £741,524

Other openers

Marco Spada: Bolshoi ballet, £80,376 from 145 sites (live event)
The Past, £65,848 from 31 sites
20 Feet from Stardom, £62,154 from 65 sites
Dangerous Acts, £1,572 from 1 site
The Fold, £883 from 8 sites
Afternoon Delight, £757 from 1 site
Leave the World Behind, £474 from 1 site
Almost Married, £236 from 1 site
The Borderlands, £79 from 1 site

Thanks to Rentrak