UK Box Office Information 7th - 9th Dec 07

The Bond (Daniel Craig) and the blonde (Nicole Kidman) are back and have helped Chris Weitz's The Golden Compass (Entertainment) reach the no. 1 spot on its opening weekend. Taking £7.2m including previews, The Golden Compass has become the 6th highest opening of the year and has started the festive season off with a bang, and despite critics accusing the author Philip Pullman of pushing atheism throughout the novel, it seems as though this didn't stop audiences going to the theatre this weekend! The story - and the first in Pullman's trilogy - follows a girl called Lyra Belaqua who travels to the far north to save her best friend who has been kidnapped by a mysterious organisation headed by the glamourous yet sinister Mrs Coulter (Kidman). Along the way she encounters talking polar bears and other people's daemons - a persons soul which lives outside of their body in the form of an animal - and whilst Mrs Coulter has a golden monkey, Lord Asriel (Craig) has a snow leopard - what would yours be??

Knocked down to 2nd place is Fred Claus (Warner Bros.) which has taken a box office total of £3.8m to date, whilst Timothy Olyphant as Agent 47 in Hitman (20th Century Fox) has taken £2.4m in two weeks. Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe are still playing it cool in American Gangster (Universal), which is in 4th place with £8.6m, whilst Beowulf (Warner) is in 5th place with £6.7m.

The second new entry into the chart is Codename: The Cleaner (Verve), which opened in 12th place with £62k. Starring Cedric The Entertainer and Lucy Liu, Jake (Cedric) is a janitor with a case of mistaken identity as an undercover agent and as a result, he becomes entangled in a dangerous government conspiracy.

The last new entry is the Bollywood film Dus Kahaniyaan (Eros) which opened in 13th place with £40k. Meaning 'ten stories' Dus Kahaniyaan is the work of 6 directors looking at the modern romance of people living in the realms of power where fortunes are made and squandered, honour betrayed and redeemed, and love lost and rediscovered.

Interesting film fact of the day: For The Golden Compass, 10,000 girls turned up for open auditions for the role of Lyra Belacqua, however in June 2006, 12 year old Dakota Blue Richards won the part, meeting the approval of Philip Pullman.

Source: Carlton Screen Advertising