Gravity tops Aussie box office on opening weekend

Warner Bros distributed feature Gravity starring George Clooney and Sandra Bullock has topped the Australian box office on its opening weekend. The film, set in space, has been critically well received and opened to takings of $3,546,776 across 469 screens.

In second place was comedy Grown Ups 2. Distributed by Sony, this was the third weekend for the film which stars Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock and Salma Hayek. It took $2,288,947 across 285 screens on what was a long weekend in New South Wales, Queensland, the ACT and South Australia. This was the first weekend since the start of September that two films made for adult audiences have managed to fill out the top end of the box office chart with school holiday favourites Turbo, Smurfs 2 and Planes the biggest winners on recent weekends.

It was the second weekend at the box office for Australian film Tim Winton’s The Turning. It saw the number of screens increase by just one to 17. It made $165,532 this weekend, a drop from the $215,000 it made the previous weekend.

Rush – starring Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Bruhl as racing drivers James Hunt and Niki Lauder – was sixth in the box office with a weekend opening of $1.2m.