26th December 2025 - 28th December 2025

 

1. (01) Avatar: Fire And Ash - £6,062,546 (-33%) Weeks: 2 (£20,753,954)

2. (NE) The Housemaid - £4,423,435 Weeks: 1 (£4,423,435)

3. (NE) The SpongeBob Movie: Search For SquarePants - £3,040,335 Weeks: 1 (£3,040,335)

4. (02) Zootropolis 2 - £1,554,099 (-18%) Weeks: 5 (£22,532,547)

5. (NE) Marty Supreme - £1,388,196 Weeks: 1 (£1,388,196)

6. (NE) Anaconda - £1,274,699 Weeks: 1 (£1,274,699)

7. (03) Wicked: For Good - £802,726 (-26%) Weeks: 6 (£44,671,344)

8. (04) Dhurandhar - £254,212 (-34%) Weeks: 4 (£2,484,537)

9. (NE) Sentimental Value - £251,054 Weeks: 1 (£251,054)

10. (NE) Sarvam Maya - £168,791 Weeks: 1 (£168,791)

 

Falling out:

Five Nights At Freddy's 2 (3 weeks)

Home Alone (Re-Release) (2 weeks*) *in this run

Fackham Hall (2 weeks)

The Polar Express (Re-Release) (1 week*) *in this run

It's A Wonderful Life (Re-Release) (*1 week) *in this run

Bha Bha Ba (1 week)

We’ve reached the final box office chart of the year and as everyone wanted to a) avoid the opening weekend of ‘Avatar’ and b) still get some of the sweet, Christmas season box office boost we’ve got loads of new entries to discuss. However, bagging a second week atop the chart is ‘Avatar: Fire And Ash’ which drops just 33% in week two to add another £6 million and pass £20 million in total. Its interesting to compare this to the second weekend of ‘Avatar: The Way Of Water’ because the 3-day gross is higher for this (£6,062,546 vs £4,974,004) however it’s still £5 million off the pace of the total gross at the same time (£25,034,122). This was because the second weekend of ‘The Way Of Water’ included Christmas Day, where the box office is notoriously pretty much nil, as one of it’s three days while this had the advantage of including Boxing Day (one of the best box office days) as it’s Friday. After two weekends, ‘Wicked: For Good’ had £32.1 million so this is still a slow start in term of modern blockbusters but we know with the ‘Avatar’ films that it’s all about the legs so we still cannot go writing this one off.

 

The biggest winner of the five new entries is ‘The Housemaid’ which debuts at #2 with £4,423,435 (£3.1 million without previews). If anyone needed a hit it was Sydney Sweeney who’s already had a string of flops this year and whose stock has dipped massively after her hugely controversial jeans advert (and rumours of dating Scooter Braun :sick:) and she’s got one. Coming from director Paul Feig, this is an adaptation of the popular Freida McFadden novel of the same name and gives him his biggest ever opening weekend on his return to theatrical releases. It wants to becoming his biggest hit overall, it would need to beat the £23 million gross of ‘Bridesmaids’. This feels like it may be out of reach but the £18.1 million of ‘Last Christmas’ is an outside shot if it has great legs.

 

Benefiting from a preview-heavy release that sees it’ opening weekend include a full 7-days of previews, ‘The SpongeBob Movie: Search For SquarePants’ opens at #3 (£3,040,335, £1.1 million without previews). With the third film (‘Sponge On The Run’) skipping cinemas in the UK entirely thanks to the pandemic, this is officially the best opening for a SpongeBob release, beating the £2.3 million opening of ‘The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water (#3, 2015) and the £1.3 million opening of ‘The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie’ (#4, 2005) however the release strategies make them hard to truly compare. The glass ceiling for the series so far is £8 million and I don’t see this one having enough in the tank to reach that. The percentage drop for this next week is going to be massive!

 

Opening at #5, the real winner of this week’s box office is ‘Marty Supreme’ (£1,388,196). I don’t usually comment on theatre-averages but they really need to be mentioned this week. ‘Marty Supreme’ hasn’t had a full release this week and it’s going much wider next weekend, however, in the cinemas it has opened in, it has made an average of £10,438k. This is the 11^th best per-theatre average of the year but the top 10 include films with incredibly limited openings. Of wide releases (100+ cinemas), this is the by far the best average of the year. In fact, (thanks to Box Office Theory for this fact), it’s the best average for a wide-release since ’12 Years A Slave’ made £12.1k per theatre in 2014. Timothée Chalamet is going all out for that Oscar and his largely unorthodox promotional campaign (viral fashion brand, weird TikToks, the EsDeeKid collab!) has worked wonders. If this can continue the momentum when it goes wider next week, then this is going to be massive and will have to be considered a frontrunner for awards season. 

 

Getting a little lost in the crowd but still managing a respectful debut is ‘Anaconda’ (£1,274,699, #6). A meta reboot of the 1997 cult-classic, this sees Jack Black and Paul Rudd star as two film-makers who look to reboot the original film but accidentally get mixed-up with a real monster snake. Sony are usually good at giving these types of films the right budget and have given this a moderate $45 million budget which gives it a real chance of profitability in my eyes. It’s got okay-ish reviews but it’s great to see this type of comedy still reach cinemas. It feels like this has become a streaming-type film in recent years so I hope it can become a hit for Sony.

 

Another of the big Oscar contenders ‘Sentimental Value’ gets its start at #9 (£251,054). The re-teaming of director Joachim Trier and star Renate Reinsve after their other awards-botherer ‘The Worst Person In The World’ (£193,493, #7, 2022), this sees Reinsve as an actor who turns down a role by her estranged director father but gets jealous of the younger star taking her place. Their last hit fell just short of £1 million but with this being looking set for awards success, I can see this making that at a minimum. The final new entry this week is Indian horror-comedy ‘Sarvam Maya’ (£168,791, #10). It stars Nivin Pauly as a Hindi-priest who is visited by ghosts (how Ebenezer Scrooge).

 

As I suggested last week, the holiday season has been kind to ‘Zootropolis 2’ that lands at #4 this week after an 18% drop giving it an additional £1.6 million. After 5 weekends, it is now within the top 10 films of the year with £22.5 million. It is now finally tracking above ‘Zootopia’ at the same stage which had £21,572,159. ‘Wicked: For Good’ has another alright weekend (-26%). If it wasn’t for the insane run of the first film last year, we would be hailing this as a huge hit. It’s still ticking slowly towards ‘Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy’ to be the #2 hit of the year. The final holder in the top 10 is ‘Dhurandhar’ which has another great weekend (-34%) as it hits £2.5 million. A great result for an Indian film.

 

There are two further new-entries in the #11-15 section: ‘Tu Meri Main Tera Main Tera Tu Meri’ (#12) and ‘#RunSeokjin  EP.Tour: The Movie’ (#14).

 

Next week sees the openings of ‘Song Sung Blue’, ‘Peter Hujar's Day’, ‘Ikkis’, ‘No Time For Goodbye’ and ‘Back To The Past’. We also get re-releases of ‘Happy Feet’ and ‘Blue Velvet’.  Can any of them top the charts?

 

~

 

Paul Feig Openings:

 

Grounded: Unaccompanied Minors (£240,378, #9, 2006)

Bridesmaids (£3,445,395, #1, 2011)

The Heat (£2,500,522, #2, 2013)

Spy (£2,557,824, #1, 2015)

Ghostbusters (£4,388,944, #1, 2016)

A Simple Favour (£1,621,900, #2, 2018)

Last Christmas (£2,654,354, #1, 2019)

The Housemaid (£4,423,435, #2, 2025)

2nd January 2026 - 4th January 2026

 

1. (01) Avatar: Fire And Ash - £4,427,063 (-27%) Weeks: 3 (£31,598,261)

2. (02) The Housemaid - £3,857,747 (-13%) Weeks: 2 (£12,367,166)

3. (05) Marty Supreme - £2,764,274 (+98%) Weeks: 2 (£6,002,922)

4. (04) Zootropolis 2 - £2,084,983 (+34%) Weeks: 6 (£27,522,024)

5. (03) The SpongeBob Movie: Search For SquarePants - £1,177,468 (-61%) Weeks: 2 (£5,996,385)

6. (06) Anaconda - £974,797 (-24%) Weeks: 2 (£3,888,749)

7. (NE) Song Sung Blue - £936,255 Weeks: 1 (£936,255)

8. (07) Wicked: For Good - £605,794 (-25%) Weeks: 7 (£46,484,065)

9. (NE) Back To The Past - £251,826 Weeks: 1 (£251,826)

10. (09) Sentimental Value - £182,436 (-28%) Weeks: 2 (£606,416)

 

Falling out:

Dhurandhar (4 weeks)

Sarvam Maya (1 week)

Happy new year everyone! 2026 has started where 2025 left off with ‘Avatar: Fire And Ash’ celebrating its third week at #1 with a 27% drop that sees it add another £4.4 million and pass £30 million to climb up to #6 in the 2025 releases chart. It’s been way off the pace of 2022’s ‘The Way Of Water’ (£44,971,330 at this stage) for a while but it’s now also running-behind the pace of the 2009 original that had £32,815,618 as it climbed back to #1 for its second week out of eight. The second film had seven consecutive weeks at top spot but I’m not fully convinced that this one will manage four.

 

And that’s because ‘The Housemaid’ is defying expectations to push it close with a 13% drop (actually a 26% increase if you take out previews) seeing it add £3.9 million to already pass £12 million after two weekends of play. Sydney Sweeney is no stranger to the Boxing-Day-release-turned-early-January-smash playbook after ‘Anyone But You’ showed amazing holds to close 10x it’s opening weekend in 2023/2024. But, despite being a huge success, that film grossed £11.5 million in total, a figure that ‘The Housemaid’ has already sailed past. I said last week that the £23 million gross of ‘Bridesmaids’ wast too high a target but it’s now already Paul Feig’s third-biggest hit and I don’t have the same conviction in my previous claim. It has really caught on and I could see it being next week’s top earner.

 

I would usually have talked about the new entries by now but I think this week is one where the top three is the biggest story and demands to be discussed first. Last week’s ‘limited’ release was historic for ‘Marty Supreme’ and it’s first week in wide-release wasn’t half bad either. Increasing 98% in business, Josh Safdie’s table-tennis drama is already at £6 million and ahead of where Timothée Chalamet’s big Oscar contender from last year ‘A Complete Unknown’ was at this stage (£5,916,730) despite the Bob Dylan-name factor and its more traditional release strategy. I have no idea how to predict where this one will end up, if it can ride the wave of awards season and continue to keep the hype, it could be something incredibly special.

 

Despite the 2025 films dominating, we do have our first two hit films for 2026; the highest of which being ‘Song Sung Blue’ at #7 (£936,255, £708k without previews). An awards outsider, this is an adaptation of the little-seen 2008 documentary of the same name and sees Kate Hudson and Hugh Jacksman star as a couple who perform as a Neil Diamond tribute act and have a tumultuous life-story. This has been pegged as a bit of a crowd-pleaser and initial reactions seems to be positive so don’t be surprised if this sticks around.

 

The final new entry this week is ‘Back To The Past’ (251,826, £165k without previews, #9). Not a meta-remake of the classic Michael J. Fox film but instead a Chinese sci-fi which is a sequel to the 2001 ‘A Step Into The Past’ TV show. It’s not quite ‘Ne Zha 2’ but still a decent showing for a Chinese film in the UK market.

 

The other boxing day films that haven’t already been mentioned all register drops: ‘The SpongeBob Movie: Search For SquarePants’ drops to #6 with a 61% drop in business. However, I mentioned last week that it had massive previews and this hold is actually a lot better than I expected. Without previews, it actually increased 11% and is pennies short of £6 million. In a week where I have to retract everything I said last week, I claimed this wouldn’t hit the £8 million to be the biggest SpongeBob movie in the UK. I was wrong! It’s already above the original and the second one is well in its sights. ‘Anaconda’ drops 24% and is having a solid, under-the-radar performance. It’s already at £3.9 million when the original couldn’t even hit £2 million. ‘Sentimental Value’ officially drops 28% when you include previews but increases 55% on pure weekend gross thanks to it expanding wider this week. It’s at £600k and will be looking to at least double that with awards buzz incoming.

 

‘Zootropolis 2’ continues its world domination, increasing 34% on weekend 6 and officially beating the £24 million gross of the original film. ‘Wicked: For Good’ shreds 25% but also hits a big milestone this weekend. At £46.5 million, it has officially climbed above ‘Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy’ to rank as the #2 film of 2025. The only question now is whether ‘Avatar’ will knock it back to third or will it fall off a cliff.

 

There is one further new entry in the #11-15 section: ‘Peter Hujar’s Day’ (#14). However, we also see a re-entry for ‘Happy Feet’ (#13).

 

Next week sees the openings of ‘Hamnet’, ‘Giant’, ‘The Raja Saab’ and ‘Becoming Victoria Wood’. We also get a re-release for ‘Labyrinth’.  Can any of them top the charts?

I'm surprised at the housemaid, I didnt expect it to do well knowing how the authors books aren't considered good despite her popularity but the film has been getting rave reviews

Given that everyone seemed to be willing for Sidney Sweeney to fail at everything this year, I’m surprised that The Housemaid has been the resounding success it has had on both sides of the Atlantic has been surprising. It’s also surprising to see Paul Feig having a successful film for the first time in ages after a string of duds. It looks like it’s his most successful film since “Last Christmas”, which surprised me because a) I didn’t realise he directed it, and b) because of its bad reviews I assumed it was a financial flop as well, but it looks like it had healthy takings.

Some delightful results over the past couple of weekends. Firstly, The Housemaid being a big fat HIT. I bet Sydney is going to be pushing hard for The Housemaid 2 to be made asap (I understand that there are two follow-up books for source material, that I think her character is in)

Secondly, Marty Supreme beating Anaconda even during the initial limited release weekend, and then how much it's smashed when expanding. Word of mouth is extremely strong and I think Timothee is going to sweep awards season so it should keep ticking along nicely.

It's going to be interesting to see how Avatar goes now that the Christmas holidays are over and there will just be less groups/families going to see it. We're already down to just one 3D Premium format of it with one 2D performance and have added extra showings of 'The Housemaid' for next week...

Ofc not all of the UK are the same so it could just be here in Nottingham whilst somewhere like London where they favour the Premium Format more will have more Avatar etc.. but it's interesting.

Jana Nayagan looked like it was going to be huge over this weekend, but we had to pull it from release due to the Distributor having disputes about its certificate! So whenever that's eventually released, I think that'll be one to watch out for.

It’s a shame only Friday to Sunday sales count and not the whole week

9th January 2026 - 11th January 2026

 

1. (02) The Housemaid - £3,523,229 (-9%) Weeks: 3 (£17,881,582)

2. (NE) Hamnet - £3,248,940 Weeks: 1 (£3,248,940)

3. (01) Avatar: Fire And Ash - £2,600,206 (-41%) Weeks: 4 (£35,814,418)

4. (03) Marty Supreme - £2,042,558 (-26%) Weeks: 3 (£9,435,172)

5. (04) Zootropolis 2 - £1,227,736 (-41%) Weeks: 7 (£29,349,084)

6. (05) The SpongeBob Movie: Search For SquarePants - £617,624 (-48%) Weeks: 3 (£6,894,721)

7. (06) Anaconda - £525,611 (-46%) Weeks: 3 (£4,753,286)

8. (07) Song Sung Blue - £435,691 (-53%) Weeks: 2 (£1,868,638)

9. (NE) Giant - £370,665 Weeks; 1 (£370,665)

10. (RE) Labyrinth (40th Anniversary) - £320,994 Weeks: 1 (£320,994)

 

Falling out:

Wicked For Good (7 weeks)

Back To The Past (1 week)

Sentimental Value (2 weeks)

Just as I predicted last week, ‘The Housemaid’ continues to be a smash hit by climbing to #1 in its third week with a 9% drop (3,523,229) being enough to de-throne ‘Avatar: Fire And Ash’ after 3 weeks atop. With a cumulative total of £17,881,582, it’s overtaken ‘John Wick: Chapter 4’ (£17.6 million) to be Lionsgate’s second-biggest post-pandemic hit and it will have overtaken ‘The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes’ (£18.2 million) by next weekend to top the list. It’s also only £300k away from overtaking ‘Last Christmas’ to be Paul Feig’s second-biggest hit and ‘Bridesmaids’ (£23 million) looks like it will inevitably fall too. Such an amazing turn-around for both director and star, Sydney Sweeney. Whisper it, but could £30 million and #7 in the EOY chart for 2025 be on the cards? At the very least, we will end the year without a Marvel film being in the top 10 as current #10, ‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ (£24 million) will more than likely be overtaken.

 

What I didn’t expect last week for for ‘Avatar’ not even to be #2 as awards front-runner ‘Hamnet’ debuts in that spot instead with £3,248,940 (£3 million without previews). Chloé Zhao previously directed ‘Nomadland’ (£874,785, #2, 2021) to Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress success at the 2021 Oscars and, impressively, this film has opened higher than the figure with which that film closed (£2.2 million). This is a contender to pick up some of those awards too with Irish duo Paul Mescal and, particularly, Jessie Buckley picking up a lot of buzz for their portrayals of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway respectively. It’s the biggest opening for Buckley while it trails only ‘Gladiator II’ (£9,100,897, #1, 2024) for Mescal. For Zhao, it’s behind her oft-forgotten MCU flick ‘Eternals’ (£5,456,577, #1, 2021) which closed with £14.9 million and, who knows, a successful awards season and this could even top that.

 

The other new entry this week is ‘Giant’ (#9, £370,665). This is a boxing biopic about featherweight World Champion Prince Naseem and his coach Brendan Ingle, played by Pierce Brosnan. Sylvester Stallone is amongst the producers but I don’t think this is the new Rocky challenger. It does through compare favourable to the last Boxing biopic to hit screens, Syndey Sweeney’s ‘Christy’ (£54,360, #17) from November. We do also see a re-entry on its 40^th anniversary for ‘Labyrinth’ (£320,994, #10).

 

‘Avatar: Fire And Ash’ drops to #3 after a 41% drop. At £37.5 million, it’s a long way off the £57.3 million which ‘Avatar: The Way Of Water’ had after four weekends and it’s now very safe to say that the biggest release of 2025 in the UK was ‘A Minecraft Movie’. This could still catch ‘Wicked: For Good’ but its dreams of being the EOY #1 look to be dead.

 

Continuing to impress is ‘Marty Supreme’ that drops 26% to add another £2 million and end the weekend just short of £10 million. Absolutely insane result for this film and it looks like it might end its run as one of the 20 biggest films of 2025. Who would have predicted that? Stil climbing up that chart is ‘Zootropolis 2’ which holds in the top 5 for a seventh week after a 41% drop sees it add another £1.2 million. Despite a slower start, it has now smashed 2024’s holiday season aminated hit ‘Sonic The Hedgehog 3’ that closed with £26.4 million.

 

Kate Hudson bagged a surprise SAG nom for ‘Song Sung Blue’ last week and it’s helped the film drop 53% (only 39% without previews) in weekend 2. With £1.9 million, it’s already director Craig Brewer’s biggest hit after ‘Footloose’ (£460,271, #6, 2011) which closed to £1.5 million. ‘Anaconda’ drops 46% and is at an alright £4.8 million while ‘The SpongeBob Movie: The Search For SquarePants’ drops 48% and is just short of £7 million.

 

There are two further new entry in the #11-15 section: ‘The Raja Saab’ (#11) and ‘I Puritani: Met Opera 2026’ (#14).

 

Next week sees the openings of ’28 Years Later: The Bone Temple’, ‘Rental Family’, ‘Parasakthi’, ‘The Voice Of Hind Rajab’ and 'Miss Moxy’. We also get re-releases of ‘The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring’, ‘The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers’ and ‘The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King’. Can any of them top the charts?

28 Years Later should knock Housemaid off but who knows, its going very strong

If only Friday to Sunday sales contribute to the weekly box office, then what happens with the Monday to Thursday sales?

6 hours ago, Hadji said:

If only Friday to Sunday sales contribute to the weekly box office, then what happens with the Monday to Thursday sales?

They are accounted for in a film’s lifetime gross, but box office charts often focus on just the weekends. If you look at an overall 2026 box office list the it will include the weekday takings in their totals.

Great to see the numbers over the last few weeks. Looks like Avatar will not catch up to Wicked's total?

28 Years Later should easily go number 1 this week. Rental Family definitely won’t as some cinemas aren’t showing it and they had it on Monday as a secret screening. The Running Man might have gone to number 1 when released if cinemas don’t show that as their secret screening

10 hours ago, Herbs said:

Great to see the numbers over the last few weeks. Looks like Avatar will not catch up to Wicked's total?

I wouldn't completely rule it out yet because the other two 'Avatar' films both had historic legs and held for ages but it does look like this one is falling away a bit more quickly and being effected by the strong competition so Universal must be quite confident for 'Wicked; For Good'.

8 hours ago, Hadji said:

28 Years Later should easily go number 1 this week. Rental Family definitely won’t as some cinemas aren’t showing it and they had it on Monday as a secret screening. The Running Man might have gone to number 1 when released if cinemas don’t show that as their secret screening

Agree that '28 Years Later' will be the #1 but I don't think having secret screenings have any effect on box office and made no difference to 'The Running Man' missing top spot.

11 minutes ago, LewisGT said:

Agree that '28 Years Later' will be the #1 but I don't think having secret screenings have any effect on box office and made no difference to 'The Running Man' missing top spot.

It probably did make a difference because people who booked Running Man secret screening and Running Man would’ve cancelled their Running Man bookings when they saw that the secret screening on 8th November was Running Man. I was one of the few who cancelled their Running Man booking after that secret screening. I also cancelled my Rental Family booking for Friday as I saw it on Monday at their secret screening

Edited yesterday at 20:211 day by Hadji