US release: 17th January 2020
South Korea release: 15th January 2020
Austria release: 16th January 2020
£17.8 Million $204.4 Million
$424.6 MillionReleased in the UK this weekend, Friday, 19th November 2021, there are 3 new releases looking to take your attention and where available could hit your local cinema and try and replace Eternals from the top of the UK box office.
Here are this weeks new releases
Check back on Monday to see what new movies made it onto the Weekend Box Office Chart.
With the 2020 box office collapsing in March due to the global pandemic the Chinese market was the first an quickest to recover and it dominated the global scene over the whole year.
The top grossing movie of the year was The Eight Hundred wich was released in August and did big business in China.
Chinese films accounted for 6 of the top 20 movies of the year and 7 of the movie were released in 2019 with a holdover in 2020.
Tenet which was the first big movie released during the pandemic made it into the top 5 movies of the year despite being considered a flop.
Many movies have had there releases moved to 2021 and cinemas did not have the massive tentpole pictures that would have pulled in over a Billion dollars in revenue, in fact its the first time in over a decade there has been no movie taking over $1 Billion.
Here are the top 5 movies by gross across the globe in 2020.
A massive hit in China the action war epic is directed by Hu Guan and took $161 Million on its full opening weekend.
Over its full global release the movie took $441.8 Million making the top grossing global movie of the year.
After a lengthy gap Will Smith and Martin Lawrence re-teamed as the Miami cops and the movie was a global smash.
Released at the start of the year its release just missed the cinemas closures due to COVID-19 and took $418.2 Million.
Sam Mendes released his Oscar nominated was movie in America in late 2019 but got its global release in early 2020 and its the 3rd top movie of 2020 with $375.4 Million.
Directed by 7 of Chinas top directors this anthology movie took $101 Million durings its Chinese opening.
Globally the movie is the 4th highest grossing of the year with $371.1 Million.
In America this movie was moved to an August release with studios hoping that cinemas would have re-opened after 4 months of closures, but the global pandemic had other ideas and although countries has started to re-opened cinemas had limited capacity.
The movie did relatively well in global cinemas but with mixed reviews it was not the film Warner Bros. had hoped, but a top five of the year is not bad with a gross of $362.6.
The US box office got off to a good start for the first quarter of the year by which time the Will Smith and Martin Lawrence movie Bad Boys For Life was the surprise top movie, then in March everything changed.
When the pandemic hit hard cinemas closed for 4 months and although there were weekly charts it was mainly from drive in theatres and studios started shifting release dates hoping things would get back to normal by the end of the year.
Tenet opened in August and it was considered Warner Bros. opened it too early and the movie despite taking $58 Million was considered a flop.
Studios have moved their films around even more since cinemas started to re-open and have gone into 2021 or been moved to streaming, but Warner Bros. again have tested the water at the end of the year with Wonder Woman 1984 which got a release on Christams day 2020 at cinemas and on HBO Max.
Disney has bypassed cinema all together on 2 of their potential biggest movie with Mulan going direct to Disney+ (for a premium price) and the Pixar movie Soul released on Christmas Day.
As it stands the top 20 movies in the US took a reasonable $1.6 Billion but compared to 2019 the top 20 took $5.8 Billion.
Here is 5 top grossing movies at the US box office in 2020.
Starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence who return as the Miami cop duo in the third in the Bad Boys series.
The movie was a surprise box office hit on its release on 17th January and took $204.5 Million at the US box office making the top movie of the year.
Released on the 10th January (wide, it cam out in 2019 on limited to catch the Oscar deadline) the movie is based during World War one and is film as if it was a continuous single shot.
Despite not winning the best movie Oscar the film took $158 Million at the US box office and is the second best movie of 2020.
The last movie in the Skywalker Saga was released in 2019 where it took $362.1 Million and was the 6th top movie.
Because of the pandemic the movie managed to be the 3rd best film of 2020 after taking $153 Million.
After going through a strange redesign for its main character Sonic when fan feedback was not too good about his look in the trailer the movie moved to February 14th release date.
The film was a surprise hit and took $146.2 Million at the US box office making it the 4th top movie of 2020.
The sequel movie the 2017 smash hit Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle was released in 2019 where it took $175.4 Million and was the 11th top film in that year.
In 2020 the movie took $142.5 Million and is the 5th top grossing of the year.
The US box office has just passed the $2 Billion mark, its November, for the past few years this has happened in March.
When the pandemic spread around the world, cinemas globally started closing down, in the US this is still ongoing.
This biggest movie of the year in the US is Bad Boys For Life which has taken over $204 Million in the US, and no film will overtake that total this year, the film was released in January of 2020 and had a good run at the box office.
In context of this the biggest movie in the US was Avengers: Endgame which took over $850 Million.
To start with all blockbusters started putting their release dates to later in the year or to 2021, but as it became clear that the pandemic would last far longer than originally expected movies started to appear on streaming services.
The effect of this is all those big Hollywood blockbusters that could have, and would have, grossed close a billion either took far less on basically limited release, or nothing due to a DVOD release.
Tenet was the first movie with blockbuster potential to be release during the pandemic and although it grossed over $50 Million in the US it was a potential $800 million plus grosser.
Drive-in theatres gave a small lifeline but even a blockbuster in this arena was worth just over a Million.
With a vaccine being likely by year out to hopefully go into mass production for 2021 we can hope that 2020 will go down in history as a one off, although with companies like Disney suggesting it will release future movies on Disney+ as exclusives or day and date releases it could be bad news for the cinema industry.
In this period of time when there are no new movies (just yet) getting released and studios are re-releasing 'classic' catalogue films in an attempt to get people back to movie theatres a 19 year old Harry Potter movie tops the global box office this week.
We are still a couple of weeks away from the much anticipated Tenet, being championed as the saviour of cinema, so the box office is largely filled with re-releases and low budget horror movies, and with China and Japan seemingly getting back to something near normal there are many films from those territories doing very well.
Here is the top 5 worldwide weekend breakdown 14th - 16th August 2020.
The first Harry Potter movie (replace Philosopher's for Sorcerers outside the UK) gets a 4K 3D rerelease in China and take $13.6 Million in the process making it the top gross global movie of the weekend.
The movie up to Sunday had taken a global gross of $996.1 Million but after a blockbuster Monday at the box office the movie has now taken over a Billion dollars in global grosses.
The Will Smith and Martin Lawrence buddy cop movie get a Chinese release and takes $3.2 Million on its opening weekend meaning its a re-entry on the global box office at number 2.
The movie has now taken $424.6 Million globally since its release back in mid January of 2020.
Doraemon is a long running animated series in Japan and this week the latest movie in the series goes up to number 3 with a weekend gross of $2.6 Million.
The movie directed by Kazuaki Imai has now taken $15.5 Million in global grosses.
Acclaimed Chinese director Hu Guan's war epic is at number 4 this week as his latest movie makes its debut in China with a weekend gross of $2 Million.
Christopher Nolan's 2014 movie about space travel across the galaxy falls to number 5 with a global gross of $1.7 Million taking to movies total gross to $710.5 Million.