US release: 10th April 2020
Malaysia release: 12th March 2020
Singapore release: 12th March 2020
£948.9 Thousand $3.8 Million
$49.3 MillionThis weekend there are 2 new releases looking to take your attention on the home entertainment market as we finally get Mortal Kombat on home streaming and we have Stowaway joining it.
As the UK has various different level of lockdown cinemas in some parts of the country are open while others have to remain shut so this weekends box office could be similar to recent charts.
There are 3 new films released in the UK and where available looking to hit the box office, but can they challenge last weekends top movie, Elf, for the number 1 spot?
Check back on Monday to see what new movies made it onto the Weekend Box Office Chart.
The two big Chinese hits My People, My Homeland and Legend Of Deification are still the biggest films across the globe this weekend but The Wars With Grandpa and Greenland make good ground as they open in more countries.
Here is the global box office top 15 Quickview.
This weeks global top 5 breakdown 9th - 11th October 2020.
This Chinese smash sequel from directors Hao Ning and Sicheng Chen stays at the top for a second weekend with $41.1 Million, 73% down from last weekend.
This gives the movie a total gross globally of $312.1 Million.
Remaining at number 2 for a second weekend is the animated tale from directors Teng Cheng and Li Wei which takes $11.3 Million, a 93% drop from last weekend.
The movie has now taken $163.2 Million globally, but its only been released in China so far!
Loosing momentum but still at number 3, Christopher Nolans movie takes $9.8 Million over the weekend, a 31% drop, for a total of $323.5 Million.
The Robert De Niro starring movie gets a US release this week and goes back up to number 4 with $9.8 Million, 86% up from last weekend, giving it a total global gross of $5.4 Million.
The latest Gerard Butler movie is getting a direct to VOD release in many parts of the world but where it is out its doing well and goes up to number 5 this weekend with $2.8 Million, up 83%.
The movie has taken $29 Million globally after 10 weeks of release.
As is well documents the COVID-19 pandemic and its devastating effect on the world has been the story of the summer, and in fact the year, and it has had the biggest impact on the box office ever.
Cinemas across the globe started closing down in the middle of March and didn't open again in the UK until early July, so the summer box office period of May till early September has been greatly effected.
Most of the Spring and Summer potential blockbusters got their release dates moved, at least once, including Mulan, A Quiet Place Part II, Tenet and Ghostbusters: Afterlife and some of them got a direct to VOD release, including Mulan!
Tenet did finally get a cinema release at the tale end of August and was just about the biggest film of the summer and when the movie theatres finally opened the box office continued where it left off with the Pixar movie Onward still at the top.
What you will also see in the list of top 10 movies for the summer is evidence that movie theatres used old catalogue titles to try and entice movie goers back hence Jurassic Park and Dirty Dancing showing up.
Here is a breakdown of the top 5 film of the summer box office 2020.
Christopher Nolan potential big summer blockbuster had its difficulties on its way to the box office but it finally got a release on 28th August and was hailed as the saviour of the cinema.
The movie had a good start to its box office career and took £5.3 Million on its debut and took £10 Million over the Summer period.
In comparison the top film of summer 2019 was the The Lion King remake which took over £71 Million.
Disney's Pixar movie Onward was the top film on weekend of 13th March when cinemas closed and when they came back it was still the top movie, it has remained in the top 3 for every UK box office since.
Over the summer the movie took was has tuned out to be quite an impressive £1.6 Million.
After the top 2 potential blockbusters we start to get movies which would not have been big movies, but due to the lack of big blockbusters they got a lot of exposure, maybe still not taking as much as they would have done but having good box office runs.
This Russell Crowe movie was the first new movie to get released after the closures and benefitted from that, it has a big star name and got a decent amount of hype and exposure.
The movie took £1.4 Million over the summer period.
Another movie which has had a decent box office run that would not have without the lack of blockbusters is director Alexs Stadermann likeable animation which took just over a Million pound over the summer.
Perhaps the most controversial movie of the summer, the sequel movie was at the start of the summer the biggest movie to go direct to VOD that would have had a good box office run.
The cinema chains, especially the American company AMC which owns the ODEON chain in the UK objected to this move, this was at a time when the world didn't know how long the closures would last.
Despite the release onto VOD the movie still took a very respectable £745K at the UK box office, this is no where near tens of million it has taken on digital.
An agreement between cinema chain AMC and film distribution giant Universal Studios has seen cinema release window shrink to 17 days after release.
Before the coronavirus pandemic the release window was 75 days, but the cinema closures gave Universal an opportunity to test direct to VOD which they did with Trolls World Tour and it would seem it was a success.
Universal threatened to release new movies simultaneously on VOD and cinema for which AMC, who owns UK cinema chain ODEON, threatened to no longer show their films.
As the two have a synergy of sorts they have come to an agreement and the window has shrunk from 75 days to 17, so the cinema chains have about 2 and a half weeks to make their money.
It will be interesting to see how this works in reality as the film on VOD, or box office VOD, it changes per platform, will be in the £20+ ($19+) region, and for a movie to watch at home when the normal rental price is in the £6 ($5) region.
The boundaries can be moved but clearly Universal in in control and they will do whatever brings them the most amount of money.
Watch this space, but lets hope the movie theatre will still be with us in the future, Steven Spielberg famously claimed home video tapes would kill the cinema experience and refused to release E.T. for many years on VHS, it ended up helping to boost the industry, lets hope the same can happen here and the two can find their space in the market.