The winner
"To infinity and beyond": Buzz Lightyear's well-worn catchphrase lends itself rather conveniently to reports of Toy Story 3's UK box-office success. With an official debut of £21.19m, the franchise's much-anticipated second sequel is the biggest-ever opening for an animated movie and has already surpassed the total gross of Pixar's lowest-achieving hit Cars (£16.5m). According to Disney's press release, Toy Story 3's opening is 30% greater than its nearest animated rival and the second-biggest UK debut ever behind Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Of course, it's more complicated than that. Like many blockbuster openings, Toy Story 3's impressive figures have been achieved with the help of previews, which in this instance took place on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday when kids were home from school and available for trips to the cinema. Strip out the £9.69m in previews and Toy Story 3's opening weekend is reduced to a more earthly £11.49m.
For context, Shrek The Third opened with £16.67m – £10.33m excluding previews. The figures for Shrek 2 are £16.22m with previews and £10.61m without. In other words, comparing the Friday-to-Sunday portions of the grosses, Toy Story 3 – which benefited from higher ticket prices at 3D screens – opened just 8% ahead of Shrek 2. Including previews, Toy Story 3 is 27% ahead of the biggest Shrek debut.
Relative to previous Pixar openings, Toy Story 3 is comfortably the biggest whichever way you look at it. Including previews, the previous biggest debuts were achieved by The Incredibles (£9.75m) and Monsters, Inc (£9.20m). Not including previews, the top openings were for Toy Story 2 (£7.76m) and Finding Nemo (£7.38m). Pixar's most recent film, Up, began life with £6.41m and no previews last October.
In the lifetime pantheon, Toy Story 3 is already breathing down the necks of Toy Story (£22.3m, not including its recent re-release in 3D), WALL-E (£22.9m) and Ratatouille (£24.8m). With more than £21m in the bank in just seven days, Woody and co's latest outing is well placed to overtake Toy Story 2 (£44.3m total, not including the 3D re-release), thereby becoming the UK's biggest-ever Pixar hit. Toy Story 3 has achieved more than £16m of its total so far at 3D screens, and a further £404,000 at 11 IMAX sites.
As for Disney's claim that Toy Story 3 is the second-biggest debut of all time – discounting previews, that is far from the case. Quantum Of Solace opened without previews at a figure of £15.38m, nearly £4m ahead of Toy Story 3's three-day number. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix debuted without previews at £16.49m in July 2007.
The stronghold
Three days before Inception's release, director Christopher Nolan fretted to US magazine Entertainment Weekly about its commercial prospects. "It's a real nail-biter," he said. "I really want this to work for an audience." Now, ten days into the film's run, Nolan can stop biting those nails. Anyone who thought that Inception would prove too challenging for broader summer-blockbuster audiences, or that its grosses would quickly diminish after an initial burst from Nolan enthusiasts, has been proven wrong. With a decline of just 29% and a second weekend of £4.17m, Nolan's mindbending narrative is proving a bona-fide hit with UK cinemagoers. That number doesn't match up to the second weekend of big family hits such as Alice In Wonderland but it's ahead of the second frame of Iron Man 2 (£3.21m) and even of Avatar (£3.83m) – although receipts on the latter were diminished over its second weekend by the closure of cinemas on Christmas Day. Inception has grossed £14.20m in ten days and is well on the way to a total north of £20m.
The toppling titans
With Shrek Forever After losing the bulk of its showtimes on 3D screens to Toy Story 3, a big decline was inevitable. Falling by 71% on last weekend, DreamWorks Animation's hit sequel will now be grubbing around for its last remaining coin from families that have yet to catch it. Not that the studio or its distributor Paramount will be shedding too many tears: with £26.88m so far, Forever After is already the fifth biggest hit of the past 12 months behind Avatar, Alice In Wonderland, Up and The Twilight Saga: New Moon. Also suffering a hefty decline, with a 58% fall, was The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. Again, backers Summit and E1 will be content as with £25.64m so far the film is on target to become the biggest Twilight film to date, eclipsing New Moon's overall total of £27.50m. It's also the seventh-biggest hit of the past 12 months.
The arthouse battle
With Inception and Toy Story 3 both strongly appealing to upscale audiences, it's a tough environment for arthouse films. Cerebral genre flick Splice is the top title in that market, entering the chart at number 9. The next three places are all occupied by French-language features – Leaving, Heartbreaker and The Concert – which continue their battle for specialist audiences. The weekend's winner proved to be Leaving, which declined just 22% to move above Heartbreaker for the first time in its three weeks of release. Following her success in I've Loved You So Long, Kristin Scott Thomas confirms her commercial appeal in a sensitively presented French drama.
The loser(s)
Plunging out of the top 10 with a drop from sixth to 19th place, Killers was the biggest loser of the weekend. Its fall of 87% on the previous frame was partly due to a reduction in showing sites from 129 to 37, and it will struggle to hold even this paltry hand of venues going forward. Evidently, audience word-of-mouth has matched the hostile verdict of critics.
The weakest new entrant was children's animation Jasper, Penguin Explorer, aka Jasper: Journey To The End Of The World. After the film played Saturday and Sunday matinees at only one regional cinema, its distributor would prefer its gross (£9) to be left out of this report. But it picked up reviews in a variety of outlets including the Daily Mirror, and has further regional bookings going forward, so we include it for reasons of comprehensive market reporting.
The future
Partly thanks to those hefty Toy Story 3 previews, the "weekend" overall is up 111% on the equivalent frame from 2009, when Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince topped the chart for the second time running and The Proposal was the top new title. The good news is set to continue with this week's release of The Karate Kid and The A-Team, which are both pursuing aggressive preview strategies and are familiar to audiences from the hit 1984 film and the cult 1980s TV series respectively. After the dismal days of June, in which we were starved of strong releases by distributors convinced audiences would be glued to World Cup football, cinemas have bounced back in impressive fashion in July.
Top 10 films
1. Toy Story 3, £21,187,264 from 562 sites (New)
2. Inception, £4,172,568 from 456 sites. Total: £14,204,521
3. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse £1,436,792 from 505 sites. Total: £25,636,305
4. Shrek Forever After, £1,223,759 from 530 sites. Total: £26,878,721
5. The Rebound, £360,015 from 306 sites (New)
6. Predators, £305,424 from 354 sites. Total: £5,302,342
7. Khatta Meetha, £124,104 from 35 sites (New)
8. Get Him To The Greek, £119,424 from 195 sites. Total: £6,809,659
9. Splice, £110,225 from 91 sites (New)
10. Leaving, £39,409 from 33 sites. Total: £204,525
How the other openers did
Thillalangadi, 3 screens, £13,685
Baaria, 4 screens, £7,385
City Island, 17 screens, £6,936
My Night With Maud, 2 screens, £6,133
Ivul, 3 screens, £2,327
Jasper, Penguin Explorer, 1 screen, £9.
