Blu flies to the heights of first place

Audiences flood into the cinema, but not for Noah

It’s been a second successful weekend for sequels, with Rio 2 taking the top spot with a fantastic £2.8m opening weekend. Those who read our weekly articles will know that last week Owen predicted this child friendly film would just be another midtable un-achieving release. Whether this will have a lasting effect on the table is still to be seen however with a lack of new kids films to challenge it, I’d say a top 5 finish seems more than likely for next week.

Director Darren Aronofsky will be happy to see a consistent audience for the opening weekend of his film, Noah, making £2.5m. That’s only £100k less than his Oscar winning Black Swan. After a backlash from some Christian groups who were upset to see a version Noah that wasn’t the same as written in the bible, this weeks third placed film could keep pulling in audiences with the amount of intrigue and word of mouth surrounding it.

The top 2 from last week have both lost significant audience numbers in their second weeks with both taking less than half of what they took in their opening weeks. Even despite this, Captain America: The Winter Soldier managed to stay in the top 2 however Muppets Most Wanted dropped to fifth place. Both are likely to remain in the top 10 next week with no huge films being released to challenge their places but both companies will be hoping not to lose as big a percentage of their audiences as they did this week.

Opening Next Week

The question that will be answered next week is what UK audiences want more of: plenty of action or casts of great actors? On the side of action we have Gareth Evans sequel to his 2011 film The Raid: Redemption, The Raid 2: Berandal. With action films being a third of this weeks top 10 there’s some challenge for it but with no new competition in the action category it could easily make it into the top 5.

However on the side of great casts there are plenty of films that could make the top 10 with Half of a Yellow Sun and The Last Days of Mars both being released on Friday. Oscar nominated Chiwetel Ejiofor and BAFTA winning Thandie Newton lead the cast in Half of a Yellow Sun, about the struggle to establish an independent Nigeria and this certainly has the ability to make it into the top 5 but sixth or seventh is a more likely position. Similarly The Last Days of Mars, which stars Liev Schreiber and Olivia Williams, will be hoping for a top half finish but is more likely to be stuck closer to the bottom.

What films have you watched this week? Are there any films you are looking forward to seeing next week.

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