GBP to USD conversion rate: 1.30
Sony’s Venom: The Last Dance started with a £4.3m weekend – enough to top the UK-Ireland box office, although down on the starts of the first two films in the franchise.
The Last Dance played in 622 sites, taking a £6,915 location average. This is down on the £5.6m start of 2018’s Venom, from 556 sites at a £10,160 average; and the £6.2m start of 2021’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage, from 597 sites at a £10,331 average.
The Last Dance has surpassed the openings of several recent comic book adaptations, including The Flash (£4.25m in June 2023), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (£3.7m in August 2023) and The Marvels (£3.4m in November 2023).
It knocked Chris Sanders’ The Wild Robot down to second. The Dreamworks animation fell 37% from its opening weekend, with £1.9m, and is at £6.4m so far – down slightly on the £6.7m of fellow Universal animation Migration at the same stage in 2023. That film ended on £21.5m, so crossing the £20m mark is still a possible achievement for The Wild Robot.
Paramount horror Smile 2 added just over £1m on its second weekend, a drop of 40.5% that brings it to £4m in total. It has slipped behind the rate of 2022’s Smile, which had £4.8m at this stage and ended on £11.7m.
Former number one Transformers One posted a £377,581 third weekend – a 41.2% drop that brings it to £3.4m in total for Paramount.
It held slightly better than Studiocanal’s The Apprentice, which still maintained a top five spot. It dropped 42.1% with £372,604 bringing it to £1.6m from two weekends.
Pedro Almodovar’s first English-language feature film The Room Next Door started with £239,043 – slightly down on his previous film, 2022’s Parallel Mothers with £247,075, and less than his record opening of £433,283 for 2006’s Volver. Playing in 233 sites, The Room Next Door made a £1,026 site average.
Elsewhere, Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance has become Mubi’s highest-grossing title in the UK and Ireland. The film posted another excellent hold on its sixth weekend, dropping just 32% with £150,000 taking it to £3.4m, ahead of the £3.3m of 2024’s Priscilla. The Substance is already Mubi’s highest-grossing worldwide release, topping the $10m figure of Priscilla from Mubi territories at the start of this month.
More to follow.