Daniel Radcliffe shows us that he can have a Box Office life post-Potter with a storming weekend for his first film since he finished being the boy wizard, The Woman In Black.

1. The Woman in Black (412 sites) W/E: £3,153,020 NEW

2. The Muppets (534) W/E: £2,650,664 NEW

3. Star Wars: Episode 1 3D (369) W/E: £1,528,156 NEW (Includes Th previews)

4. The Vow (319) W/E: £1,091,469 NEW

5. Chronicle (397) W/E: £1,024,583 Total: £4,055,680

6. Journey 2 The Mysterious Island (445) W/E: £902,857 Total: £2,419,809

7. The Descendants (346) W/E: £743,017 Total: £5,698,448

8. War Horse (370) W/E: £580,984 Total: £16,456,011

9. Jack and Jill (332) W/E: £521,925 Total: £1,730,153

10. Man on a Ledge (351) W/E: £419,979 Total: £1,609,137

Source: The Guardian

With a whole hell of a lot of new entries this week, it was never entirely clear what was going to top the chart before Friday but as soon as the opening grosses for the Woman In Black started coming in, it was obvious that the film was going to have a very strong debut at the top and with over £3 million in 3 days, Daniel Radcliffe has made a very strong start to his career past the guaranteed profits of the Potter series. Fair play to the guy as he’s been appearing all over the place in support of the film and with Momentum breaking their bank for the film’s marketing, efforts have paid off with a debut which makes the strong performance in the US look weak in comparison. The somewhat controversial decision to re-edit the film to get a 12a cert has paid off commercially and certainly lends the film some added juice with an “uncut” edition potentially appearing on home video formats. The question for the film will be seeng how it sustains week-on-week but with the quietest weekend for wide releases since the start of the year coming up, this could perform stronly for a few weeks, something which may have othwerwise been affected by the film’s not universally positive reviews (though it seems to have gone down better on this side of the pond than in the US).

Disney’s The Muppets would have been numer 1 on most weeks but despite an expected bump in attendance over the weekend, it didn’t quite match The Woman In Black, lagging behind by about a half million pounds over the 3 days. Despite this, it’s a strong debut for a film with a huge marketing presence and with the half-term, holiday this week, weekday grosses should be bloody huge and may get cloer to Black by Thursday, though saying that that film does attract a huge schoolkid audience also. The Muppets will be playing for weeks to come for sure though and will likly beat The Woman In Black in lifetime gross as the “kids” movie drop-off is usually a lot lower than teen aimed horror.

Opening in 3rd with a strong enough, though not US matching, debut is Star Wars: Episode 1 3D which maybe took a little less than Fox were hoping for but then.. it is Episode 1 after all and despite the SW fanboys, including myself, putting down money to check it out, this isn’t the Wars film which is going to get a truly broad audience out there. The Phantom Menace is notoriously more popular with children but with fresh content out there for kids already, this was always going to be a harder sell. However, with half-term well underway, weekday grosses should be solid even if there is a certain drop-off expected afer the fans rushed out to see it over the weekend. Expect a reasonably high drop-off next week, and especially with 12a rated 3D action hitting cinemas this coming weekend.

Coming in at number 4 with a debut which will be heavily bolstered by Valentine’s sales (the Cineworld I was in last night had a tannoy announcement saying The Vow was sold out before I saw This Means War, and afterwards the queue for the next screening took up an entire floor), but this is a debut which will be met by Sony bosses with more of a shrug than anything else, not really signalling the kind of success like-aimed films such as Dear John and The Notebook have reached in recent years. Tatum and McAdams don’t have a great deal of star power here and this is a debut hich seems to reflect that fact.

Last week’s number 1 moves down to 5th and on the face of it looks like a fairly hefty 50%+ drop but with the film having 2 additional days of previews last week, the drop-off doesn’t look too bad for a well-reviewed and received film which has an awful lot of competition for its audience around, and has more to come this weekend also. This was never a film which was going to take £20 million but what it has done is set up a highly promising platform for a low budget film which a perhaps bigger budgeted and larger scale sequel could leap up from. This film is about establishing a bit of a sleeper hit position with potential for big success in the future and its performance is meeting these credentials perfectly. Journey 2 has a very solid drop-off week-on-week only around 25%, boding very well for the coming half-term week with the film managing to successfully take its position as the film of choice for kids who think they are too old for The Muppets but aren’t allowed to see The Woman In Black by their parents. I’d expect a low drop-off again next week and Warners should be very happy with his result.

Following on, the only two “awards” films in this week’s chart (The Artist somewhat unexpectedly dropping out this week) The Descendants and War Horse make similar week-on-week tumbles but with both dropping less than half, they are still certainly finding their places in the crowd and will look to have a couple weeks more of solid play yet. Next up, Jack & Jill takes a depressingly small decline as the teen audience continues to fuel utter idiocy (at least based on the marketing and my common sense) and Man On A Ledge also takes a similar tumble, both also dropping by less than 50% and shoring up what has actually been a very solid week on the chart, the half-term holiday really packing in many screens and proving that in hard times, the cinema is still a place people turn to.

With the half-term holiday continuing, releases slow right down and give many of the films above a hell of a fighting chance at retaining a good hold with only two wide releases opening for us this coming weekend, E1 and Sony will be hoping to bring in the action crowd, and with a 12a rating can aim this pretty broadly too, for Neveldine/Taylor’s latest opus Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance which I am pumped for despite rumblings to the contrary from some folks on Twitter. We also get the surprise Oscar botherer of the season, Warner’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close which I’m not expecting to make too much of an impact. Whether the Ghost Rider can pummel The Woman In Black remains to be seen but join me next week as I take a look at the burning wreckage.