Universal’s Snow White and the Huntsman was the most popular film by far in Australian cinemas in the four days up to and including Sunday.
Filmgoers spent $6,194,694 to see the new version of the classic fairy tale on 379 screens on its opening weekend, giving it an impressive per screen average of $16,345.
Some of those seats would have been filled with friends and family of Aussie Grieg Fraser, whom director Rupert Sanders chose as his cinematographer.
Walt Disney’s animated adventure film Brave also opened on the weekend, grossing $2,509,608 to claim second place in the top 20 chart.
The film, which hinges on the actions of a red-headed princess, is the first released Pixar project to have a female lead and received an Australian premiere as part of the Sydney Film Festival (SFF).
These two new titles pushed the six films leading the box office last week down the chart in a very orderly fashion: after two weeks at the top, Fox’s Prometheus moved from first to third position with a gross of $1,524,061; Sony’s That’s My Boy from second to fourth ($853,934); Warner’s Rock of Ages from third to fifth ($746,547); Sony's Men in Black 3 from fourth to sixth ($589,422); Roadshow’s What to Expect When You’re Expecting from fifth to seventh ($425,0563); and Walt Disney's The Avengers from sixth to eighth ($307,314).
This represented a fall in revenue for each of these films of between 40 and 52 per cent.
A Royal Affair, which also screened at SFF, was the next biggest earner of the weekend and the most popular in the chart to be released by an independent Australian distributor, in this case, Madman.
Australian films at the box office in 2012