1. Brave (556 sites) W/E: £2,371,691 Total: £13,259,610

2. Ted (503) W/E: £1,692,883 Total: £25,620,707

3. The Bourne Legacy (507) W/E: £1,596,289 Total: £7,828,435

4. The Dark Knight Rises (398) W/E: £1,378,717 Total: £52,534,102

5. Keith Lemon: The Film (420) W/E: £1,196,310 NEW

6. The Expendables 2 (462) W/E: £1,028,904 Total: £4,316,173

7. The Three Stooges (350) W/E: £509,324 NEW (Includes W/Th previews)

8. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days (465) W/E: £424,206 Total: £6,217,366

9. Ice Age 4: Continental Drift (375) W/E: £331,851 Total: £28,381,351

10. The Imposter (49) W/E: £252,170 NEW (Includes Sun previews)

This week’s Box Office sees things stay pretty much business as usual at the top of the chart, with more of interest to talk about further down as Brave hangs onto the top spot for a second week in a row as it looks to keep on entertaining the family audiences who are being somewhat ill-served in the late Summer period. The chart is rather thin on the ground in kids product given the time of year with the big family winner of the period, Ice Age 4 looking to make an exit from the chart soon with nearly £30 million banked. This is something I find it hard to believe Brave will be able to come close to despite a decent hold week-on-week, when considering the staggered release contributing to the gross last time.

Leapfrogging fellow Universal film in what has been a storming performance throughout August, Ted only drops around 20% week-on-week with a gross which pisses on many other “broader” films from a great height and looks to be one of the very top performers of the summer season. Unlike The Bourne Legacy which had a drop off of around two-thirds, though it did have 4 additional days of previews to  justify this kind of a fall,plus its got a lot of competition for action audiences over the next few weeks, which could give it a great deal of hurt in terms of grosses and site counts going into September. Not worrying about anything of this sort anymore is The Dark Knight Rises which has now overtaken The Avengers to become the highest grosser of the year, a title it will keep until Skyfall in a couple of months at the very least.

Our first new entry comes from a film which barely needs an introduction any more as the ubiquitous Keith Lemon sees an opening which isn’t quite a flop but isn’t going to impress many either. Having very little knowledge of the character other than the fact that he seems to appear in about a half-dozen shows on the ITV channels, I’m assuming Lionsgate must have been hoping that his sheer force of presence would make people see him on the big screen, but this opening may well be a disappointment with a very wide release which results in a pretty poor per-screen average and what will likely be a fast exit from screens. Performing better for this distributor is The Expendables 2 which drops less than 50% which considering an extra day of previews last week is not bad going for a film which had a bit of a struggle last week. How it will cope this weekend may be more of a challenge though.

Continuing our new entries is The Three Stooges which makes a long-delayed opening in the UK to the sound of… not all that much. Not really being known in the UK at all, and especially by the family audience it hopes to capture, this was always going to have issues but this could still be a disappointment for Fox and considering that it’s not quite the car crash cinema many would expect. With Fox opening another comedy this week they are in danger of slightly cannibalising themselves, however, this will play matinees for a few weeks yet. A less than 10% drop brings better news for Murdoch’s mob though as Wimpy Kid 3 drops less than 10% in what has been a strong little slow burn over the last little while, with their Ice Age 4 also sees a solid drop-off as it prepares to leave the bigger screens.

Rounding off, what is likely the story of the week, is the impressive opening for documentary The Imposter which after the debut of Searching For Sugar Man a few weeks back shows that an appetite is their in the summer months for those who want some amazing real-life stories which don’t involve sport. With an opening which built on multiple 5-star reviews and extensive press touring by the filmmakers, along with the staggering true life facts of the film, which were always going to get broader sections of the media interested. It’s great to see Revolver give this a chance as well, the distributor generally releasing British urban dramas but taking a chance with something a bit different for them here and scoring with it with a performance which has the smell of something that can expand in future weeks.

This week sees a busy slate of openers with Fox’s rather reviled The Watch and Sony’s Total Recall remake both attacking cinemas in wide openings as I type with Disney putting out Australian comedy A Few Best Men and Lionsgate starting off the season of scary movies with the Sam Raimi produced The Possession, which played to OK enough notices at FrightFest this past weekend, and looks to grab an audience which has been rather starved of genre fare of late.