Weekly UK Box Office

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)