Titanic 3D rules the waves over a wet Easter weekend

The winner A combination of wet weather and the Easter holiday created a box-office bonanza for UK cinemas at the weekend, with the 3D re-release of Titanic emerging top of a highly competitive heap. With an impressive Friday-Sunday total of £2.86m including £97,000 in previews, the James Cameron epic went on to pull in a further £1.03m on bank holiday Monday, yielding a holiday weekend haul of £3.88m. This compares with a debut weekend of £4.81m for Titanic back in January 1998, and an opening weekend of £1.53m (including £228,000 in previews) for recent 3D re-release, Star Wars: Episode I. The Lion King 3D kicked off its run with £2.75m last October, on its way to a gross so far of £12.37m. The runners-up Three movies fought for bragging rights on the runner-up spot. Going just by the official Friday-Sunday weekend period, The Hunger Games won it, with £2.39m, buoyed by a relatively slim decline from the previous weekend of 20%. The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists came in a bit lower, but when bank holiday Monday takings are added in, the Aardman animation beats the Suzanne Collins adaptation by £3.58m to £3.42m. The Pirates! also enjoyed an excellent hold, up 14% from the previous weekend. All films benefited from the fact that Friday was a school holiday, with many titles seeing significant upticks on the day compared with the week before . Landing ahead of The Pirates! in the official top 10 is Mirror Mirror , with £2.39m. However, that figure is boosted by four whole days of preview takings (Monday-Thursday) totalling £1.25m. Including bank holiday Monday, the Snow White adventure managed £3.01m, although it's worth noting that this figure represents grosses from eight days of play. Although weekend box-office charts dominate media attention, during school holiday periods significant sums can be achieved midweek. Hunger Games has grossed more than £6.3m since last Monday, and The Pirates! just shy of £7m over the same period. With another week of holiday for state schools, and two for private ones, there is clearly a lot more earning potential for top titles, especially if the wet weather holds. Four films in the official weekend chart achieved grosses in excess of £2m, for the first time since August 2010, when Toy Story 3, Knight and Day, Inception and Step Up 4 managed that feat. Foreign language surges The current season is proving to be highly fertile for foreign language cinema, with several directors achieving career bests. Arthouse crowd-pleaser The Kid with a Bike now stands at £280,000 – more than double the lifetime gross of Belgian siblings the Dardennes' previous biggest hit. With £208,000 so far, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is comfortably the best UK result for Turkey's Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Now Aki Kaurismäki's Le Havre has joined the fray, posting a debut of £63,000 from 23 screens (£95,000 including bank holiday Monday and a few previews). The Finnish director's last film, 2007's Lights in the Dusk , opened with £6,250 from six cinemas. The one before, 2003's The Man Without a Past , did better: £33,260 from 10 venues. Le Havre Kaurismäki's first film made in the French language, was available simultaneously on video on demand via the Curzon On Demand platform; its box office does not appear to have been dented. None of these arthouse titles came close to the weekend's top foreign language films: Bollywood flick Housefull 2 , and Norwegian thriller Headhunters . The latter followed the distribution gameplan that worked for distributor Momentum with Let the Right One In , which released Easter weekend in 2009, grossing £224,000 from 68 screens, including £21,000 in previews. Headhunters aimed a bit wider, 83 cinemas, earning £265,000 including just under £10,000 in previews. Including bank holiday Monday, it's taken £381,000. Housefull 2, with £396,000 including £35,000 in previews, has achieved the best debut for an Indian language film since Ra.One last October. Including bank holiday Monday, its total to date is £495,000. Together, these five foreign language films grossed a healthy £990,000 over the four-day holiday period. Add in Punjabi action romance Mirza: The Untold Story, and the tally tips over the £1m barrier. The future Due to a late Easter last year, early April 2011 represented a box-office lull, with under-performing titles including Rio, Hop and Sucker Punch. Consequently, the current market represents an astonishing 178% uptick on the equivalent weekend from a year ago. It's also a healthy 37% up on the weekend frame for last Easter , when Fast Five dominated the market. While January and February saw eight consecutive weekends where box-office trailed 2011 levels, the past four have seen consecutive upticks on the year-ago equivalents. That trend looks set to continue for at least one more weekend, given anticipated healthy holds for the current crop of films, plus the arrival today of Battleship , adapted from the Hasbro game, and then on Friday The Cabin in the Woods . Top 10 films 1. Titanic 3D , £2,856,540 from 427 sites (New) 2. The Hunger Games , £2,394,782 from 514 sites. Total: £15,168,889 3. Mirror Mirror , £2,389,033 from 392 sites (New) 4. The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists , £2,166,162 from 551 sites. Total: £7,716,061 5. Wrath of the Titans , £1,368,131 from 473 sites. Total: £5,351,400 6. 21 Jump Street , £845,869 from 359 sites. Total: £7,331,740 7. The Cold Light of Day , £503,985 from 309 sites (New) 8. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel , £451,307 from 267 sites. Total: £17,737,576 9. StreetDance 2 , £424,833 from 395 sites. Total: £1,953,260 10. Housefull 2 , 58 sites, £396,475 Other openers Headhunters , 83 sites, £254,920 (+ £9,849 previews) Le Havre , 23 sites, £63,098 (+ £1,900 previews) This Must Be the Place , 18 sites, £45,501 (+ £5,900 previews) Mirza the Untold Story, 8 sites, £28,090 La Grande Illusion , 11 sites, £9,599 (+ £2,886 previews) A Cat in Paris , 21 sites, £5,731 Ordinary, 2 sites, £2,132 North Sea Texas , 3 sites, £2,308 Return , 3 sites, £527 A Gang Story , 1 site, £46