The winner

With Easter this year falling three weeks later in the calendar than it did in 2013, cinemas have been slow to emerge out of the March doldrums. But now, finally, a strong crop of commercially appealing titles is kicking fresh life into the market. Topping the official chart is Rio 2, with £2.88m including previews of £703,000 – a significant improvement on the original Rio's debut, which was a weak £1.52m including previews of £109,000. Rio went on to a healthy lifetime gross of £13.56m thanks to a sustained run through April 2011 and beyond. With no strong competition coming in against Rio 2 – unless you count animation Khumba: A Zebra's Tale – the animated sequel may achieve a similar feat of longevity.

The real winner

If previews are left out of the picture, and looking at grosses just for the Friday-to-Sunday play period, the real chart topper is once again Captain America: The Winter Soldier, with weekend takings of £2.76m. Dropping a mild 34% from the previous frame, the Marvel picture has now grossed £10.93m here, which puts it ahead of the £9.5m lifetime total for the first Captain America.

With kids now on holiday for Easter, both Rio 2 and The Winter Soldier should see solid returns every day for the next two weeks. The same can be said for Muppets Most Wanted, which has just posted weekend takings a slim 24% down on its opening session, and has cumed £3.51m to date.

The Winter Soldier is so far running at 78% of the pace set by Thor: The Dark World, indicating a £15-16m total by the end of its run. However, since the Captain America film seems to be decaying at a slower rate than the Thor sequel, it might well improve on that forecast.

The biblical blockbuster

With Darren Aronofsky's Noah shielded from UK critics until alarmingly close to release date, speculation about the biblical tale inevitably swirled. In the event, most reviews were positive, but questions remained as to how audiences would respond. In the more religiously inclined US, Noah had opened with an impressive $43.7m (£26m), indicating a UK debut of around £4.4m. However, in this relatively secular territory, a standard equivalence was never a likely outcome, and backers Paramount will doubtless be pleased with, and relieved by, the achieved result: a first weekend of £2.51m.

In the US, Noah fell a steep 61% in its second session, perhaps an indication that talking rock monsters didn't quite fit the typical churchgoer's conception of the classic Noah tale. In the UK, departure from scripture may prove less of a concern for audiences.

The YA contender

Last year, Hollywood stumbled in its attempts to convert fresh young adult literary properties into film franchises, with Beautiful Creatures, The Host and The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones all underwhelming at the box office. Consequently all eyes have been trained on Summit's latest effort: Divergent, which is based on the first of Veronica Roth's novel trilogy.

In the US, where the film opened three weeks ago and the books have achieved significant sales, Divergent kicked off with a nifty $54.6m (£32.6m). An equivalent result was never on the cards for the UK, and distributor eOne should be reasonably content with the film's £1.77m opening, while hoping for solid play throughout the Easter holiday.

Last year, Beautiful Creatures opened in February with £738,000 plus £371,000 in previews. The Host followed a month later with £991,000. And then in August, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones debuted with £670,000 plus £474,000 in previews. With initial takings around double these young-adult efforts, Divergent has signalled clear distance. The original Twilight film began here with £2.51m, on its way to an £11.2m total. Based on that result, Divergent is headed for around £8m in the UK.

The specialised audience

After five weeks of play, The Grand Budapest Hotel now stands at £9.15m, almost dead level with Wes Anderson's previous best, Fantastic Mr Fox (£9.19m). In fact, with Monday's takings added in, Budapest has reached £9.23m, making it the director's biggest ever hit at UK cinemas. £10m now looks a likely target for the director's big commercial breakthrough in live action – his previous best, The Royal Tenenbaums, took £3.33m here.

Landing at number 8 in the chart with £282,000, The Double has achieved a strong site average of £3,969, and is far and away the top title playing on fewer than 100 screens. However, that number looks a bit less shiny if you remove previews totalling £59,000. Richard Ayoade's previous directorial effort, Submarine, began in March 2011 with £244,000 from 60 cinemas, including £24,000 in previews. The grosses for the two films are almost identical if previews are left out of the picture, although The Double is playing slightly wider and might have been predicted to have fared better. The film looks a budgetary step up from Submarine, and boasts a bigger-name cast including Jesse Eisenberg and Mia Wasikowska.

More of a rigorously art-house proposition, Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin now stands at £977,000, and is still chasing the target set by the director's last effort, Birth (£1.18m). Asghar Farhadi's The Past is up to £156,000 after 11 days of play. Outside of Indian cinema (eg Gunday, Jilla) and Pakistan thriller Waar, top foreign language titles of the year so far are Yves Saint Laurent with £332,000, The Past, and Stranger by the Lake, with £152,000.

The live event

The burgeoning event-cinema sector once again nabs a spot in the Top 10, with the Met Opera's live relay of Puccini's La Bohème landing in seventh place. Takings of £375,000 compare favourably with the less-appealing Werther by Jules Massenet, which managed £206,000 three weeks ago. Alexander Borodin's Prince Igor took £260,000 for the Met Opera a couple of weeks before that.

The future

Thanks to the arrival of strong commercial titles targeting the Easter market, overall box office is 15% up on the previous weekend, and a robust 48% up on the equivalent frame from 2013, when Dark Skies was the top new release. The imminent future looks less rosy, since distributors have now shot their big commercial bolts, and are following up this Friday with more niche propositions: action sequel The Raid 2, Hammer horror The Quiet Ones and John Michael McDonagh's dark comedy drama Calvary. Also in the mix: art-house crowdpleaser The Lunchbox, Norwegian oil-boom thriller Pioneer, literary adaptation Half of a Yellow Sun, genre hybrid The Last Days on Mars and the aforementioned family animation Khumba. With several existing titles likely to hold strongly, expect some casualties among newcomers.

Top 10 films

1 Rio 2, £2,882,680 from 530 sites (New)

2 Captain America: The Winter Soldier, £2,764,030 from 540 sites. Total: £10,933,395

3 Noah, £2,511,397 from 455 sites (New)

4 Divergent, £1,767,295 from 423 sites (New)

5 Muppets Most Wanted, £897,395 from 541 sites. Total: £3,513,823

6 The Grand Budapest Hotel, £611,999 from 385 sites. Total: £9,152,006

7 La Bohème: Met Opera (live event), £374,522 from 166 sites (New)

8 The Double, £281,794 from 71 sites (New)

9 The Lego Movie, £264,574 from 416 sites. Total: £31,993,600

10 Non-Stop, £189,815 from 221 sites. Total: £9,150,776

Other openers

Main Tera Hero, £67,544 from 37 sites

Maan Karate, £34,336 from 10 sites

A Story of Children and Film, £7,809 from 16 sites

Tom at the Farm, £7,434 from 7 sites

Visitors, £700 from 3 sites

Ya Rab, £349 from 4 sites

The Motel Life, £199 from 1 site

Haunter, £55 from 1 site

Thanks to Rentrak