US release: 11th June 1982
£13.9 Million 
$435.1 Million 
$792.9 Million In a fascinating weekend for the UK box office a 10 week old movie, Minions: The Rise of Gru goes back to the top, a 15 week old movie, Top Gun: Maverick goes back into the top 5 and a 2021 movie and one of the top grossing movies in the UK is the top new release, Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Adding to this the second highest new movie is E.T. The Extra Terrestrial celebrating its 40th anniversary, yes 40 years since the release of the once global highest grossing movie of all time!
Less impressive this weekend is the debut releases for Three Thousand Years of Longing which is new at 10 with £307,176, Fall~2022 new at 13 with £220,270 and The Forgiven~2021 new at 15 with £182,772.
Going back to the top of the UK box office, once again, is the sequel movie to Minions which 5 weeks after it was last at the top, and 10 weeks after it was first at the top it takes £1.06 Million to return to the top, a 46% jump over last weekend.
With no high profile new releases now in the last couple of weeks, and the end of the school summer holidays, and the bargain price of £3 per ticket on Saturday this is perhaps not too much of a surprise.
The movie has now taken £44 Million in the UK and is the second top movie of 2022, it is also the 61st top movie of all time.
Interestingly the movie is behind the first Minions movie but it has been consistently about £1 Million behind.
Also doing well at the end of the school summer holidays and jumping back up to number 2 this weekend is the animated movie based on DC superhero pets which takes £1 Million on its 6th weekend, which is 41% up from last weekend.
The movie has taken a total of £14 Million in the UK over its 6 weeks of release.
The movie which simply wont go away is the top movie of 2022 in the UK which this weekend takes £600,258, a modest 7% increase over last weekend.
The movie has now taken a total of £81.6 Million over its 15 weeks of release and is the 9th top movie of all time in the UK.
The only film this weekend on the top 5 this drops week on week is the Brad Pitt fast train heist movie which takes £554,100 on its 5th weekend of release, a 7% drop over last weekend.
This gives the movie a total UK gross of £9.2 Million.
Highest new movie of the weekend
Getting a re-release to celebrate National Cinema Day is the 2021 Spider-Man release from Marvel and Sony with a little help Disney.
The movie takes a quite incredible £469,309 on its return to the box office, incredible because the movie is the 4th biggest movie of all time in the UK and it was only in cinemas earlier this year, and although there is 20 minites extra footage it does not change the story and makes it a 3 hour movie!
Still the movie has now spent 16 weeks on the chart and taken an amazing £96.9 Million, it is also the 8th top movie of 2022.
An agreement between cinema chain AMC and film distribution giant Universal Studios has seen cinema release window shrink to 17 days after release.
Before the coronavirus pandemic the release window was 75 days, but the cinema closures gave Universal an opportunity to test direct to VOD which they did with Trolls World Tour and it would seem it was a success.
Universal threatened to release new movies simultaneously on VOD and cinema for which AMC, who owns UK cinema chain ODEON, threatened to no longer show their films.
As the two have a synergy of sorts they have come to an agreement and the window has shrunk from 75 days to 17, so the cinema chains have about 2 and a half weeks to make their money.
It will be interesting to see how this works in reality as the film on VOD, or box office VOD, it changes per platform, will be in the £20+ ($19+) region, and for a movie to watch at home when the normal rental price is in the £6 ($5) region.
The boundaries can be moved but clearly Universal in in control and they will do whatever brings them the most amount of money.
Watch this space, but lets hope the movie theatre will still be with us in the future, Steven Spielberg famously claimed home video tapes would kill the cinema experience and refused to release E.T. for many years on VHS, it ended up helping to boost the industry, lets hope the same can happen here and the two can find their space in the market.