Poor result for Suneil Shetty at UAE box-office

It’s ruling both foreign and regional cinema screens this week. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse – based on the third of four vampire-based fantasy romance novels by Stephenie Meyer – topped the UAE box-office on the weekend, following its debut on Thursday. The film, starring Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner, also enjoyed number one openings in the UK and France on Friday, bringing the film’s total gross in 63 markets to $81.1 million (Dh297.9m).

No other new entry made the UAE’s top four films, with Toy Story 3, Knight and Day and The Karate Kid taking the second, third and fourth spots respectively.

Two heavily promoted Bollywood movies that were also released on the weekend appear not to have been massive hits. Milenge Milenge, starring former real-life couple Shahid Kapoor and Kareena Kapoor, only managed to clinch the number five spot on the UAE box-office chart.

But perhaps the biggest surprise of all is that Ananth Narayan Mahadevan’s latest production, Red Alert: The War Within – based on the true story of an Andhra farm labourer who becomes involved with a group of Naxalites, and starring Suneil Shetty in the lead role – failed to chart altogether. Instead, the remainder of the UAE box-office top ten consisted of I Hate Luv Storys at number six, followed by The A-Team, Harry Brown, The Prince of Persia, and Egyptian drama Bedoon Rekaba.

In terms of the foreign market, Shrek Forever After is the biggest film after Eclipse, making $56.2m in 47 territories, opening at number one in 16 of its 17 additions. Toy Story 3 grabbed the number three spot with $39.1m.

The sci-fi action film Predators, on the heels of its number three bow in North America, took the number four ranking overseas after an $18 million weekend in 22 markets.

The Karate Kid rounded out the top-five with $12.3m, taking its total to $42.1 million. A number one Mexico bow generated $3.75m, while a number three debut in Australia provided $3.2m.

In Britain, the Eclipse bow of $21m ranked as the country’s biggest of the year, and was about $2m more than what  The Twilight Saga: New Moon opened to late last year. France chipped in $12.4m, also the highest opening market take of this year. Overall, Eclipse has earned $219m after 12 days.

The foreign total for the fourth and presumably final title in the Shrek franchise stands at $210 million, with openings due this week in four markets, including Mexico and Belgium.

In Brazil, Shrek Forever After set a market opening record for an animation title with $7.4m. In World Cup-crazy Spain, Shrek still managed $5.2m while it drew $3.2m in Argentina, a market opening gross record.

The early overseas total for Toy Story 3 rose to $213.1m from 39 territories – a bit more than half of the international marketplace. Latin American markets have provided $110m of the total. France opens this weekend.

Elsewhere, The Last Airbender earned $10m from four countries, with Russia accounting for $8m. A Japan opening is due this week.

Also dipping its toes offshore into four markets (Russia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore) was new North American champ Despicable Me. The cartoon picked up $5m in total.

Other foreign totals include: The A-Team, $57.8m; Knight and Day, $38.5m; Get Him to the Greek, $18.5m; and Grown Ups, $7.9m.

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