Shia tenacity … Revenge of the Fallen sits on the No 1 spot for a second week. Photograph: PR
Despite a fall of 48% from its opening last weekend, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen continued to pound audiences into submission, resisting the relatively puny attack of new releases starring Jack Black and Cameron Diaz. Michael Bay’s robots flick has taken £16.49m in 10 days, which compares with just over £12m after two weekends for this summer’sitting previous biggest openers Wolverine, Star Trek and Night at the Museum 2. All those three films benefited from preview takings of at least £800,000, whereas Transformers opted not go the preview route.
- Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
- Release: 2009
- Country: USA
- Cert (UK): 12A
- Runtime: 149 mins
- Directors: Michael Bay
- Cast: Hugo Weaving, John Turturro, Josh Duhamel, Julie White, Kevin Dunn, Matthew Marsden, Megan Fox, Rainn Wilson, Shia LaBeouf, Tyrese Gibson
Highest new entrant is biblical comedy Year One, starring Jack Black and Michael Cera, which debuted with £976,000. It’s fair to say that when Sony dated the movie for 26 June, it didn’t anticipate that rival comedy The Hangover would mute be posing such a potent threat in its third week of release. Warners’ Vegas misadventure declined just 15% from the previous weekend, with takings of £1.91m and a highly impressive cumulative total of £11.19m.
Year One opened very close to the debuts of similarly underperforming Jack Black titles Nacho Libre (£994,000) and Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny (£923,000). The droll actor scored a better opening by means of means of Be Kind Rewind (£1.38m, including £210,000 in previews) and, of course, by School of Rock (£2.74m). He has proved further potent appease in animations such as Kung Fu Panda (£6.07m, including £2.96m in previews).
Year One is a better accrue for Michael Cera than his recent indie-romance flop Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist (£398,000 debut), but astern the openings of the person and the other Superbad (£1.48m) and Juno (£2.00m).
Given the subject matter – a family dealing by a teenager dying of leukemia – £923,000 is a creditable start for Nick Cassevetes’s My Sister’s Keeper. The film had the benefit of familiar source material (Jodi Picoult’sitting novel), marketable names Cameron Diaz and Abigail Breslin, and to some degree the fictitious story “from the director of The Notebook”. The cancer message was downplayed in marketing materials, but savvy audiences presumably guessed for what cause co-star Sofia Vassilieva was wearing a hat. Comparisons with recent Diaz movies such as What Happens in Vegas and The Holiday are not that fit, but against the record this is her lowest opening since critically reviled comedy The Sweetest Thing in 2002.
Landing with a thud at No 7, Blood: The Last Vampire opened on just £232,000 from 269 screens for one £863 average. Distributor Warners/Pathe opted not to show the film to critics, a tactic which tends to work better for titles with exceedingly aggressive marketing campaigns or built-in audiences (eg the Saw series). Blood: The Last Vampire did have some out-of-door visibility (eg on London bus shelters) but a generic samurai-sword image and the sell “from the makers of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon & Hero” under-sold the horror aspects of the picture and gave little clue that it is in the English language. Ill-attentive film fans force have miscategorised the title in the historical Asian martial-arts genre, which, following disappointing results for John Woo’s Red Cliff (£366,000 after 17 days), is not a great place to be.
Bollywood hits have been thin on the ground lately, with just Eros’s Billu Barber cracking the top 15 in 2009. That title is at present joined by Yash Raj’session New York – starring John Abraham, Katrina Kaif, Neil Nitin Mukesh and Irrfan Khan – that debuted this weekend with £158,000 from 34 screens for a potent £4,633 average. The title landed one site above US indie comedy Sunshine Cleaning, that failed to find much counter-programming traction, earning £126,000 from 104 sites for a £1,210 average.
Sunshine Cleaning sold itself as “from the producers of Little Miss Sunshine”, but the storyline – mismatched sisters start a crime-scene clean-up company – evidently didn’familiarily seek reference of the case as much as its ancestor’session dysfunctional-family road trip, and the campaign artwork lacked a famous equivalent to the yellow VW bus. Little Miss Sunshine debuted on 114 screens in September 2006 with takings of £350,000.
Amy Adams has proved a reliably perky etc. to films including Junebug and Doubt, but has yet to render her appeal into solid box-office. Disney sold Enchanted steady its exiled fairytale-princess premise, not its cast names, fissure with £2.55m in December 2007. The following autumn, Miss Pettigrew Lives on the side of a Day stumbled out of the gate with £91,000 from 79 cinemas. Doubt, which benefited from a big awards push and heavyweight co-stars Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman, began its run in February with a limp £253,000 from 145 venues.
Sunshine Cleaning’s screen average was marginally ahead of the result achieved by Rudo y Cursi: £1,139, with just shy of £40,000 from 35 locations. The number compares unfavorably with the last team-up of actors Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna and writer Carlos Cuarón: Y Tu Mamá También debuted seven years ago with £182,000 from 38 screens.
UK top 10:
1. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, 521 screens, £4,368,024. Total: £16,485,053
2. The Hangover, 425 screens, £1,910,025. Total: £11,192,716
3. NEW Year One, 382 screens, £978,008
4. NEW My Sister’s Keeper, 355 screens, £922,947
5. Night at the Museum 2, 456 screens, £492,990. Total: £19,002,278
6. Terminator Salvation, 393 screens, £424,277. Total: £13,597,757
7. NEW Blood: The Last Vampire, 269 screens, £232,190
8. Angels & Demons, 196 screens, £166,253. Total: 18,302,597
9. NEW New York, 34 screens, £157,524
10. NEW Sunshine Cleaning, 104 screens, £125,795
How the other openers did:
Rudo y Cursi, 35 screens, £39,881
Shirin, 2 screens, £3,927
Lake Tahoe, 2 screens, £1,929
Dummy, 1 screen, £639 (including £454 previews)
The Blue Tower, 1 screen, £625 (including £531 previews)
The Last Thakur, 2 screens, £350
Tenderness, 1 screen, £262
