Slumdog Millionaire is the UK's biggest ever sleeper hit

Week-on-week takings for Danny Boyle's melodrama jump 44%, while Seven Pounds fails to cash in

New releases starring Will Smith as a suicidal human saint and Drew Barrymore as a talking chihuahua failed to dislodge Slumdog Millionaire from the top of the UK box office. Buoyed by four Golden Globe wins and 11 Bafta nominations, plus scorching word of mouth and endless media buzz, Slumdog surged 44% from its opening weekend tally to head the chart with £2.63m; its 10-day total is now £5.96m.

Most films see their grosses decline by around 30-50% each subsequent weekend, but in rare instances, takings do increase – when a film expands from key cities to nationwide, for example. Family films can suddenly go up when a half-term holiday begins. And last February, No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood jumped 22% and 19% respectively the weekend after they scored wins at the Oscars.

But the increase for Slumdog, which saw its screen count rise only very slightly from 324 to 330, is an extraordinary result. Previous sleeper hits saw more modest jumps on the second weekend: Calendar Girls went up 5%, The Full Monty increased 1%, and Four Weddings and a Funeral rose 10%. Billy Elliot did better than that – up 13% on its second weekend – but this figure is way behind Slumdog Millionaire's 44% increase. Billy Elliot grossed £4.57m in its first 10 days and £17m in total. Exceeding Billy's final figure is now a highly likely prospect for Danny Boyle's feelgood film.

Seven Pounds' opening tally of £1.56m from 402 screens is no disgrace for a downbeat romantic drama, but a disappointment for a film starring Will Smith. The apt comparison is Smith's The Pursuit of Happyness, from the same director Gabriele Muccino, which debuted with £2.53m two years ago. Seven Pounds' figure is the worst Smith opening since Ali in February 2002, which grossed £1.32m in its first weekend of wide play (second weekend of release).

Beverly Hills Chihuahua's debut of £1.03m from 422 sites, for a sixth-place finish, is a disappointment for backers Disney. The family comedy – about a pampered pooch's misadventures in Mexico – opened with $29m (£20.7m) in the US last October, suggesting a UK launch around the £2.9m mark, according to industry rule of thumb. British cinema audiences are just as soppy about canines as Americans, but perhaps we didn't relate so easily to the story of a Paris Hilton-type doggie clad in bling accessories and designer booties.

Despite opening in just 187 cinemas, My Bloody Valentine 3-D won out over Chihuahua. The horror flick grossed a bloody £1.02m from 86 3-D screens, and a more anaemic £317,000 from 101 2-D locations, for a £1.34m total. Backers Lionsgate are claiming this as the best ever 3-D opening, but bear in mind that there are now more cinemas with 3-D capability than was the case for Beowulf and Journey to the Center of the Earth. Still, a screen average of £11,868 at the 3-D sites will give cheer to distributors of upcoming titles such as Monsters v Aliens and Piranha 3-D.

The fourth-highest new entry is The Wrestler, which picked up £802,000 from 277 theatres. It's easy to be distracted by a lowly eighth-place finish, and a not-so-sexy screen average of £2,895. But consider, instead, that neither director Darren Aronofsky nor star Mickey Rourke suggest automatic box-office gold. Only major awards buzz and the promise of glowing reviews could have propelled the picture – about a washed-up wrestler – into such a wide release in the first place. And as long as it can hold its sites against fresh awards-bait Milk and Frost/Nixon (both opening on Friday), The Wrestler should go on to land punches in plenty more box-office bouts.

The market continues to enjoy formidable breadth, with 11 pictures all grossing £500,000 – matching last weekend's impressive tally. Had Twilight (£499,756) grossed a few quid more, it would have been a record-breaking 12 titles. The top 15 films combined for an impressive 38% increase on the equivalent weekend in 2008, when I Am Legend and PS I Love You led the field – big smiles all round, you can bet, at the offices of the UK's multiplex chains.


Source: guardian.co.uk