It’s time for your box office update (UK specific). Cinemas in Scotland look set to close today due to Covid-19 restrictions meaning the entire UK’s cinema operators will be closed by Thursday. In addition to Germany and French closures, it’s potentially going to cause a shift in further delays from studios to the rest of the December releases.
We shall have to see how these lockdowns fare. But what happened over the weekend? Halloween. Hocus Pocus continued its ride of nostalgia with lots of showings over Halloween to hit second spot at the weekend.
It took £186,063 across 3 days in it’s 4th week of release sitting on £446k total. This is a 247% increase on last weekend! The witches have also delighted in the USA and accumulated nearly $5m in box office receipts. Not bad for a poorly reviewed Halloween film released in the summer of 1993.
Two By Two Overboard from Eone continued to dominate at the top of the box office with another £190k in gross, sitting at £955k for the fortnight so far. The Liam Neeson vehicle, Honest Thief took a 28% dip from last weekend sitting at third in the charts, with £153k in gross.
Two By Two Overboard is dominating the UK box office pre-lockdown
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Surprisingly, Secret Garden despite not being shown at Vue nor Odeon continued to delight audiences from independent cinemas in 192 sites.
It took a further £152k in box office receipts across the weekend sitting on £616k gross since release. An excellent result all things considered and with it also being on Sky Cinema and NowTV.
BoxOfficeMojo reports it’s sitting on around $6m before this weekend. There’s a lot of hysteria around further cinema closures and talking about the death of the cinema experience.
It’s wise to remember that there are huge blockbuster releases in the can, awaiting better conditions to be shown. And whilst it’s going to continue to be a difficult period, with Phill Clapp from the UK Cinema Association calling for more “government funding”, it’s going to be a challenge to survive for now.
There were even calls to extend support to “those larger companies who are not eligible for the {Culture Recovery Fund}, but are major employers in the sector”. And whom are “making valuable contributions to their local communities”.
Cinema will return, and return with a bang when they do, once consumer confidence, tent pole titles are shown. It isn’t over, until it’s over, as Rocky once said, and rest assured, Cinemas will be back.
What do you make of this article? Have you been to the cinema pre-lockdown? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
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