‘The Wild Robot’ in £3.1m debut at UK-Ireland box office; ‘The Apprentice’ opens third

GBP to USD conversion rate: 1.30

Universal animation The Wild Robot opened top of the UK-Ireland box office, with a £3.1m weekend.

Chris Sanders’ family feature, that has a voice cast including Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal and Kit Connor, played in 675 cinemas, taking a £4,591 site average. Including previews, the film has £3.3m. It is slightly down on the £3.6m start of another original Universal animation, Migration, from February this year. That film totalled a strong £21.5m across its run, indicating that The Wild Robot may yet rise to a decent figure. 

Horror title Smile 2 opened to £1.7m for Paramount, from 606 sites at a £2,804 site average. This is up on the £1.5m start of 2022’s Smile, although the £2,828 location average of that film was marginally higher. The sequel, starring 2015 Screen Star of Tomorrow Naomi Scott, has £2m including previews. 

Ali Abbasi’s Donald Trump film The Apprentice opened to £643,434 for Studiocanal, from 527 sites at a £1,221 average for Studiocanal. Including previews, the film is up to £746,303, and will look to interest in the November 5 US election to sustain its takings across the coming weeks.

The Apprentice marginally surpassed Paramount’s Transformers One, which dipped 59.9% with £642,000 to hit £2.8m from two weekends.

After an excellent opening weekend last time out, Signature Entertainment’s Terrifier 3 posted a solid hold, falling 45.5% with £561,752. The film has £2.2m in total, surpassing the reported $2m (£1.5m) production budget of the film.

With three new titles and two two-weekend releases refreshing the top five, takings for that bracket rose 27.4% to £6.6m. However they are still down 31.3% on the equivalent weekend from last year, and with takings running at a deficit to last year even before Joker: Folie À Deux’s underperformance, Studiocanal’s Paddington In Peru (November 3) and Paramount’s Gladiator 2 (November 15) can’t come soon enough for cinemas.

Joker drops

On just its third weekend in cinemas, Warner Bros’ Joker: Folie À Deux has fallen out of the box office top five, and dropped below the £500,000 per-weekend mark, with £498,532 – a 65.2% fall on its previous session. For comparison, the 2019 first title took more than 10 times this amount on its third session, with £5.5m. The sequel has £9.8m in total, down from the £40.3m of the first film at this stage.

Despite having been in cinemas four weeks longer, Warner Bros stablemate Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is just behind Joker: Folie À Deux on the weekend takings, with £467,816 on its seventh outing. The Michael Keaton-starring horror comedy is up to a decent £24.7m.

The Substance continues to be one of the top-performing titles in cinemas, now through its fifth weekend. The Mubi release added £221,000 – a 27% drop, the best hold in the top 20 – and is up to £3.2m. It is now just £96,000 behind Priscilla, which it will overtake within the next week to become Mubi’s highest-grossing film in the UK and Ireland.

Trafalgar Releasing’s ballet event cinema title Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland took £147,470 at the weekend, and has £561,290 in total following its Tuesday event day release last week.

Nora Fingscheidt’s The Outrun continues its excellent cinema outing for Studiocanal, adding £126,005 on its fourth session to hit £1.9m.

Sky Cinema’s biopic Lee  starring Kate Winslet added £109.227 on its sixth session, and is up to £4.1m.

On its 13^th weekend in cinemas, Despicable Me 4 added £107,497 for Universal – a 46% drop, that brought it to £47.8m total. It has now passed Despicable Me 2 (£47.5m) and Minions: The Rise Of Gru (£47m), will overtake Minions (also £47.8m) in the next three days and Despicable Me 3 (£47.9m) within the next week, to become the highest-grossing title in the franchise.