Free Birds avoids a stuffing in the run up to Christmas.

The man behind the mouse taken down by turkeys.

As the weather gets colder, the battle for cinematic domination heats up with The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Gravity continuing to dominate. Only 3rd place was realistically up for grabs this week and was won by family animation Free Birds. Taking just over £1m it’s still a far way behind the pulling power of Catching Fire, but easily beats its nearest rival, Saving Mr Banks.

Taking just under £800k, Saving Mr Banks, a bio-drama about Walt Disney starring Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson, landed 4th, however with Hanks playing Disney a bigger audience would have been expected, especially after the success of Captain Philips.

The Family went from bad to worse after a disappointing entry last week and failed to find any more support against its new competition. This means that in its two weeks it has taken less than Free Birds has in its first. This downward spiral looks set to continue and it wouldn’t surprise us to see it disappear from next weekends top 15 completely.

Opening Next Week

It looks like it’s going to be a quiet week again with what appears to be a battle for 3rd place with winter animation, Frozen and Western adaptation, Oldboy. Frozen which stars the vocal talents of Kristen Bell, Alan Tudyk and Cairán Hinds, seems the most likely to take 3rd and could even beat Gravity to 2nd place in what looks like a quiet week as audiences wait for the Tolkien behemoth, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.

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