Weekend box-office – 18th to 31st of October 2014 – will Gone Girl face the Fury?

In today’s post we’re going to have to quickly skim over the results of the past two weeks. These weeks saw the major releases of horror epic Dracula Untold and star studded WWII tank thriller Fury. One by one they’ll face off with David Fincher’s smash hit drama Gone Girl in the battle for October supremacy. We’re in an odd period after the September dry spell but before the packed schedules of November and December (Interstellar, The Hunger Games 3, The Hobbit 3, Exodus: Gods and Kings) followed by the dreaded January/February pit. This is where a lot of releases get the chance to become sleeper hits but the need to make an initial mark. Last week it was predicted that the Dracula reboot would edge past Gone Girl but let’s see what really went down.

US:

1. Gone Girl – Director: David Fincher – $26.4 million
2. Dracula Untold – Gary Shore – $23.5 million
3. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day – Miguel Arteta – $18.4 million
4. Annabelle – John R Leonetti – $15.9 million
5. The Judge – David Dobkin – $13.1 million

UK:

1. Gone Girl – David Fincher – £3.1 million
2. The Maze Runner – Wes Ball – £2.1 million
3. Annabelle – John R Leonetti – £2.- million
4. One Direction: Where We Are – Paul Dugdale – £1 million
5. Dracula Untold – Gary Shore – £0.8 million

Gone Girl’s triumph takes its international total to well over $200 million while Dracula Untold is struggling to reach that mark. In this week I score a dismal 1/10.

Neil Patrick Harris in Gone Girl, last week’s US and UK number one.

US:

1. Fury – David Ayer – $23.7 million
2. Gone Girl – David Fincher – $17.5 million
3. The Book of Life – Jorge R Gutierrez – $17 million
4. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day – Miguel Arteta – $11.5 million
5. The Best of Me – Michael Hoffman – $10 million

UK:

1. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Jonathan Liebesman – £4.8 million
2. Gone Girl – David Fincher – £2.4 million
3. Annabelle – John R Leonetti – £1.6 million
4. The Maze Runner – Wes Ball – £1.4 million
5. The Best of Me – Michael Hoffman – £0.6 million

Fury’s chart-toppping takings are a little below par but are still impressive. Mexican animation The Book of Life takes a modest third. In the UK the Ninja Turtles took in a surprisingly high amount of money. Here are my predictions for next week:

US:

1. Fury – David Ayer
2. Ouija – Stiles White
3. Gone Girl – David Fincher
4. John Wick – David Leitch, Chad Stahelski
5. The Book of Life – Jorge R Gutierrez

UK:

1. Fury – David Ayer
2. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Jonathan Liebesman
3. Gone Girl – David Fincher
4. Annabelle – John R Leonetti
5. The Babadook – Jennifer Kent

Brad Pitt in Fury, this week’s US number one.

Megan Fox in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, this week’s UK number one.

Weekend box-office – 11th to 17th of October 2014 – will horror spin-off Annabelle spook Fincher’s Gone Girl?

The Conjuring was 2013’s biggest commercial and critical hit in the world of horror, taking a hefty $318 million. This year it receives a lower budgeted spin off, titled Annabelle, from The Conjuring’s writer. This instalment has received a fairly negative critical response but we’ll see if it can the first film’s $40 million debut. In this week’s box-office battle it faces another major new release: Oscar favourite Gone Girl from Fight Club/Seven/Zodiac/The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo/The Curious Case of Benjamin Button/The Social Network director David Fincher. This is an intriguing showdown of mainstream hoots versus awards mongers.

US:

1. Gone Girl – Director: David Fincher – $38 million
2. Annabelle – John R Leonetti – $37.2 million
3. The Equalizer – Antoine Fuqua – $19 million
4. The Boxtrolls – Graham Annable, Anthony Stacchi – $12.4 million
5. The Maze Runner – Wes Ball – $12 million

UK:

1. Gone Girl – David Fincher – £4.1 million
2. Dracula Untold – Gary Shore – £1.7 million
3. The Equalizer – Antoine Fuqua – £1.2 million
4. The Boxtrolls – Graham Annable, Anthony Stacchi – $1 million
5. What We Did On Our Holiday – Andy Hamilton, Guy Jenkin – £0.7 million

Fincher’s work has surprisingly topped both box offices and it may well be one of his more profitable works taking around the same as Social Network’s and Dragon Tattoo’s opening weekends combined. Annabelle takes a modest second place with a still impressive $37 million, only a slight drop from Conjuring’s $40 million. Gone Girl has followed suit in the UK with an excellent debut. Britain has often taken to 18 certificated features more than America, see The Wolf of Wall Street’s three week run. Dark fantasy Dracula Untold, supposedly the start of a new Universal monster franchise, is tracking very poorly ahead of its US release next week thanks to this mediocre opening. This week I’ve scored a decent 6/10.

US:

1. Dracula Untold – Gary Shore
2. Gone Girl – David Fincher
3. The Judge – David Dobkin
4. Annabelle – John R Leonetti
5. The Equalizer – Antoine Fuqua

UK:

1. The Maze Runner – Wes Ball
2. Gone Girl – David Fincher
3. Dracula Untold – Gary Shore
4. Annabelle – John R Leonetti
5. The Equalizer – Antoine Fuqua

Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl, this week’s UK and US number one.

US remake of The Raid casts Frank Grillo, Spielberg works get release date and Luke Evans features in new poster for Dracula

Indonesia’s action mega-hit The Raid wowed Western audience back in 2011 with its cracking violence proving one of the big thriller hits of the year. Its huge cult following inspired the equally admirable Raid 2 but talks of the inevitable US remake have been taking place for sometime, to the original’s fans’ disappointment. Director Patrick Hughes (The Expendables 3, Red Hill) has cast Frank Grillo as his lead for the English language redo. Grillo is the star of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, End of Watch and The Grey and does have martial-arts credits with a Black Belt in Jujitsu.

After the disappointing end to development of Robopocalypse and American Sniper, legendary director Steven Spielberg is finally back on his feet with two new films, both of which finally gained official release dates. Spielberg (Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, ET, The Temple of Doom, The Colour Purple, Empire of the Sun, The Last Crusade, The Lost World, Amistad, Artificial Intelligence, Minority Report, Catch Me if You Can, The Terminal, Munich, War Horse, Jurassic Park, Lincoln, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan). His two new projects are a Tom Hanks (The Da Vinci Code, Captain Phillips, Forrest Gump, Philadelphia) starring Cold War thriller (Oct 2015) and Roald Dahl adaptation BFG (July 2016).

Finally tonight we’ve got a pair of brand new posters for fantasy action Dracula Untold. This marks the feature debut of Gary Shore while Welsh star Luke Evans (The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Fast and Furious 6, The Great Train Robbery) will play the future vampire alongside Charlie Cox (Stardust, Broadwalk Empire), Sarah Gadon (Enemy) Samantha Barks (Les Miserables) and Dominic Cooper (Captain America: The First Avenger).

Cold War thriller – October 16th 2015

The BFG – July 1st 2016

Dracula Untold – October 3rd

The Raid – 2015