UK Box Office = US$12.4

[GulPlum]

Steve"  wrote:
> HP and the Chamber of Secrets set a new UK box office record by 
taking
> in  7.8million pounds or $12.4 million US during the first weekend. 
> 
> At this rate, they anticipate that the gross take will be greater 
than
> Philosopher's Stone which was #58 Million (US$92 million) in UK 
only.
> 
> Sorry, if someone already posted this, but I'm hopelessly far behind
> on my post reading.

Nobody's said it here, but it's been all over HP fandom since 
yesterday morning. :-)

Putting my pedant's hat on, this doesn't count as the first weekend, 
nor has it broken the record for first weekend. It was, and broke the 
record for, a *preview* weekend (set by PS/SS last year). 

That doesn't impress me as much as some people.

It should be borne in mind that all big Hollywood productions get 
public previews in UK cinemas (it's a deliberate ploy to get word-of-
mouth advertising going from cinema-mad folk - such as myself). ;-) 
These are usually on a fairly small scale the day before, or 
occasionally the Friday a week before public release. 

To explain "small scale": Birmingham, where I live (the UK's second-
largest and second most populous city, for those who don't know) :-)
has a huge Warners multiplex, three UGC multiplexes and one Odeon 
(plus a couple of art cinemas). Public previews usually rely on one 
copy of the film at one of the UGCs, and occasionally one copy at the 
Warners, being twice shown in one of the smaller auditoria (one early 
afternoon, and one evening). For CoS, the number of copies shown 
were: UGC 3+3+2; Odeon 3 and Warners 4, and in each case, they were 
shown in the largest auditoria in each cinema, from morning to night. 

The only new films out last weekend aren't mass-public "events" 
("They" and "Rabbit Proof Fence"), so people had very little choice 
of what to see. Notably, the CoS previews  kicked out "Lilo & Stitch" 
across the board, so there were no kid-friendly movies in the cinemas 
at all.

To put the numbers into some kind of perspective, the 12-screen UGC I 
visit most often showed CoS a total of 37 times over the weekend. 
Compare that to the *14* other films being shown a total of 118 times.

Furthermore, I've just seen the James Bond preview arrangements for 
next week: there won't be any, because CoS is taking over all the 
auditoria in which it may have been shown.

It's therefore little wonder that people wondering into the cinema to 
see "something" chose to see CoS, on top of all the existing fans, 
who may or may not go again next weekend. 

Extrapolating total grosses from preview weekends is dangerous 
enough, but to do it for a film which has already blitzed its fans 
and is about to blitz the rest of the cinemas this weekend (I know 
that my 12-screen will be devoting FIVE of them to CoS!), people are 
going to get sick of it very quickly. To add insult to injury, James 
Bond 20 will be released before CoS has had a full week on public 
display, and will take away a considerable proportion of the casual 
audience.

This is all absolutely a case of counting unhatched chickens...