UK box office report, Feb 21-23: Sonic the Hedgehog runs rings around Harrison Ford's fake dog

Family films surge in half-term holiday

Despite a dearth of commercially potent new releases, the UK box office delivered a strong performance thanks to solid holds by titles already in the marketplace. The half-term school holiday, in particular, saw big numbers from the top two titles Sonic the Hedgehog and Dolittle, which fell respectively by just 12 per cent and 5 per cent from the previous weekend session.

During term time, family films tend to perform well on Saturday and Sunday and then pretty dismally Monday to Friday. In holiday periods, it’s a different story: every day of the week can perform like a weekend day. Having opened with £4.73m on its debut weekend, Sonic the Hedgehog added another £10m since last Monday, bringing the UK total to £14.7m after 10 days of play.

That puts the speedy blue creature ahead of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (£12.8m) and Pokemon Detective Pikachu (£13.8m) to become the highest-grossing videogame adaptation of all time at the UK box office. (Comparisons are not adjusted for inflation.)

Dolittle also enjoyed a successful half term, adding £5.9m since last Monday. UK total after 19 days is a robust £14.1m. The Robert Downey Jr starrer is chasing the £19.9m total achieved by Eddie Murphy in Doctor Dolittle in 1998. Global total for Dolittle is a decent $205m, but a production price tag reported at $175m puts the film still well short of profitability, when you consider revenue sharing with cinemas, sales taxes and marketing costs.

The Call of the Wild is third choice for families

Despite having the advantage of being a fresh choice in cinemas, The Call of the Wild proved to be less potent than both Sonic and Dolittle at the weekend, grossing £987,000 for the Friday-to-Sunday period, and £1.47m including takings on Wednesday and Thursday. The film is adapted from the Jack London tale of a kidnapped pet hound taken to the Yukon to be a sled dog during the Klondike Gold Rush era.

The Call of the Wild also opened in US cinemas at the weekend, almost matching Sonic the Hedgehog over the same period, with $24.8m. An equivalent result for the UK market would be around £2.5m. It’s likely that London’s book is more beloved and famous in North America, giving the film an extra edge in its home market.

Parasite records first dip

Having experienced a 132 per cent box office rise with its second week of release, Parasite now edges back by 32 per cent for its third session. Takings of £1.72m from 565 cinemas put the total for Bong Joon Ho’s Oscar winner at £8.40m. That puts Parasite well on course to overtake Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (£11.1m) to become the biggest foreign language film ever at UK cinemas.

Successful foreign language films and Best Picture Oscar winners usually enjoy a long tail in the UK, as they travel to smaller regional cinemas that usually pick up films a few weeks into the run. Already in 565 venues, Parasite may perform slightly differently: most of its potential audience has already had a chance to see it. Still, distribution partners Curzon Artificial Eye and StudioCanal should squeeze a few more million out of it by the end of its run.

Greed lands outside Top 10

Landing in 11^th place in the UK box office chart, satirical comedy Greed – starring Steve Coogan as a venal fashion retail entrepreneur celebrating his 60^th birthday with a lavish party on Mykonos – has begun with an OK £340,000 from 403 sites, and £369,000 including previews. Although those numbers seem pretty soft, this is in fact the biggest ever debut for a film by Michael Winterbottom, over the course of a career spanning 29 features (not all of which were released in UK cinemas).

Previous best debut for the director was from his A Cock and Bull Story, which began in January 2006 with £333,000 from 131 cinemas, finally reaching £1.10m. Other Winterbottom films cracking £1m total in the UK were 24 Hour Party People (£1.04m) and Jude (£1.03m).

1917 cracks £40m

First World War film 1917 added another £2.39m over the past seven days, bringing its total after seven weeks to £41.5m. In the pantheon of films released in January, this pushes 1917 past musical adaptation Les Misérables (£40.8m), and is now second only to The King’s Speech (£45.7m). January is traditionally the month when major Oscar and Bafta contenders are released into UK cinemas. Other notable hits released in January include Slumdog Millionaire (£31.7m) and La La Land (£30.5m).

The market 

February continues to perform ahead of the same month last year – although February 2019 was notable for lacking major cinema hits. Box office for the weekend is a healthy 48% up on the equivalent session from a year ago.

For the coming weekend, cinema operators welcome The Invisible Man, starring Elisabeth Moss as a woman who escapes an abusive relationship and is then stalked by a man she cannot see. Prolific producer Jason Blum (Get Out) does not score big with all his films, but The Invisible Man is picking up approving reviews, and should connect with audiences.

Also released: Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus in comedy Downhill (a US remake of acclaimed arthouse hit Force Majeure), Mark Ruffalo in class-action lawsuit true tale Dark Waters, Celine Sciamma’s Bafta-nominated Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and 1917’s George MacKay in Australian outlaw drama True History of the Kelly Gang.

Top 10 Films Feb 21-23

1. Sonic the Hedgehog, £4,171,244 from 634 sites. Total: £14,688,538 (2 weeks)

2. Dolittle, £2,032,270 from 655 sites. Total: £14,066,921 (3 weeks)

3. Parasite, £1,722,236 from 565 sites. Total: £8,397,639 (3 weeks)

4. The Call of the Wild, £1,465,400 from 487 sites (new)

5. Emma, £1,156,256 from 647 sites. Total: £4,571,310 (2 weeks)

6. 1917, £1,083,286 from 586 sites. Total: £41,616,330 (7 weeks)

7. Birds of Prey, £772,416 from 533 sites. Total: £7,706,341 (3 weeks)

8. Like a Boss, £520,059 from 467 sites (new)

9. Brahms: The Boy II, £506,773 from 339 sites (new)

10. Bad Boys for Life, £432,194 from 349 sites. Total: £15,281,622 (6 weeks)

Other openers

• Greed, £369,028 from 403 sites

• Swan Lake – Bolshoi Ballet, £194,536 from 177 sites

• Futro Z Misia, £121,758 from 148 sites

• Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan, £71,384 from 65 sites

• Ayappanu Koshium, £29,999 from 54 sites

• Little Joe, £26,796 from 33 sites

• Bheeshma, £25,864 from 12 sites

• Bhoot – Part One: The Haunted Ship, £23,508 from 35 sites

• Waiting for Anya, £11,487 from 39 sites

• Mafia: Chapter 1, £9,683 from 9 sites

• End of the Century, £9,555 from 7 sites

• Midnight Family, £7,254 from 9 sites

• Daniel Sloss: X, £4,758 from 29 sites

• Bayi Toplantisi, £4,320 from 3 sites

• The Public, £2,241 from 9 sites

• Eminent Monsters: A Manual for Modern Torture, £1,731 from 1 site

• United Nation: Three Decades of Drum & Bass, £1,428 from 5 sites

Thanks to Comscore; @cSMoviesUK. All figures relate to takings in UK and Ireland cinemas. Chart numbers include preview takings