The latest UK box office chart (weekend ending 27th October 2013) seems to have two possible number ones. The BBC is reporting that Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2 made it by around £1m more than Captain Phillips, at number two, whilst boxofficemojo (who as far as I know publish the same chart the BBC use) say Captain Phillips was number one and that Cloudy had a considerably lower takings figure. Does anybody on here know about the compilation of the UK box office charts and/or it's chart rules? I keep a list of all animated charttoppers on my website

http://www.spanglefish.com/webbyswonderful...p?pageid=288577

and have no idea whether to add Cloudy to my list or not.

Sorry if you're already aware as it may not quite be the answer you're looking for but the BBC figure appears to include £1.5m from preview screenings (from the previous weekend?) but the boxofficemojo number is strictly that weekend only (you may already have noticed but hey, at least it explains the differences :P) and it adds up with the BOM gross-to-date figure being pretty much the same as the BBC.

 

I'd say to include Cloudy as it's #1 according to most sources (including the BFI), I'm not fully clear on the rules but it seems that money taken from preview screenings goes toward the official first weekend (and some on your site may include preview takings although figures aren't listed).

Thanks for that, I did wonder if it was to do with those preview screenings, but couldn't see why they'd count in a different chart weekend to the weekend they actually happened. If this was the music charts and say Lady Gaga was officially releasing a new single on iTunes etc on Sunday, but the Sunday before she made an appearance at an HMV and sold some signed promo copies on CD there would be no way the OCC would say "we'll just add those sales to the official release week", it'd just enter low a week earlier and then (probably) rocket up the charts on release week. It seems Cloudy's preview sales would be enough on their own for it to have been placed at number 3 the week before (although boxofficemojo doesn't show those sales there either), so I'm inclined to actually say that Cloudy didn't make it, other wise it seems a little unfair on Captain Phillips. Of course the problem I have now is I don't know if any of the other films listed on my webpage got there in this way too, so I guess I have a bit of a research project to undertake now.

 

I would be interested to hear from anyone on here who has an understanding of the boxofficechart rules and their history, as I've really struggled in the past to find out anything about how they are compiled and by whom (has there been different compilers at different times, is there in fact more than one compiler even today etc?). It strikes me that there could be a market for a charts book based on these, in the same way music charts have been done in the Guiness and Virgin books. I do have one book, by Guinness, which lists the number ones to 1994, but without really explaining the compiler or compilation method, and with guesswork for the pre-1969 years, and also the early 90s number ones do not match the ones on the wikipedia pages (which from 1998 match imdb/boxofficemojo so presumably use the same source as them pre-1998 too), so I'm rather baffled by it all.