Search This Blog

Wednesday, 9 February 2011

King's Speech: more success

The King's Speech had another bountiful weekend at the box office. While second to Disney's Tangled in its second week, the stammering monarch remained in second, pulling in £2.7m, taking its astonishing running total to £30m.

That means that by the time you read this, The King's Speech will have surpassed Slumdog Millionaire's total of £31.2m: that benchmark is important because Slumdog is the last British winner at the Oscars...

Third at last weekend's box office was The Fighter, opening on an excellent £2.1m, pushing fellow Oscar hopeful Black Swan into fourth on £1.7m (with a cumulative total of £10.6m).

Over in the US, The King's Speech posted the lowest drop in the top 10, falling just 30.3% to $7.7m, for a running total of $83.5m. With BAFTAs this weekend and the Oscars not long after that, the question now is how far can the stammering monarch go given that its banked $171.1m already from fewer than 30 territories.

Indeed, the high quality Oscar contenders still on release - King's, Black Swan , The Fighter and True Grit - have collectively $416.6m in the US alone. Worldwide that total rises to $540.7m, and given that the Coens' western and the boxing brothers have barely started their international roll-out, a cool $750m must be on the cards for these adult dramas.

The final big box office conundrum: was The Social Network released too early? Yes it banked $217.9m, but could it have performed better if released during awards season?

No comments: