The winner: Fighting With My Family

A British comedy about a family of wrestlers from Norwich, starring Florence Pugh, Jack Lowden, Vince Vaughn, Nick Frost and Lena Headey, and written and directed by Stephen Merchant? There is nothing about Fighting With My Family that screams commercial slam dunk, yet it has knocked The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part off the top of the UK box office, with debut takings of £1.62m (£2.02m including previews).

It does, however, possess one particularly marketable asset in producer and cameoing star Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson. Plus the power of the World Wrestling Entertainment brand also adds value.

Merchant’s film is based on a 2012 Channel 4 documentary about the wrestling activities of the Knight family. The real-life origins of the film, which tracks daughter Saraya (Pugh) as she bids to join the WWE roster, may have proved an attraction for audiences. Last year, fictional wrestling comedy Walk Like a Panther grossed just £207,000.

The Oscars beneficiaries: Green Book and The Favourite

Green Book, Pete Farrelly’s road-trip comedy-drama, which won the best picture Oscar, climbed by 57% from the previous session, moving back up to fifth place in its fifth week of release. Takings of £743,000 boost its total so far to £7.41m.

The Favourite converted only one of its 10 Oscar nominations into a win. But Olivia Colman’s best actress victory dominated Oscars coverage in the UK, helping Yorgos Lanthimos’ historical comedy-drama to takings of £288,000, up 66%. Total so far is an impressive £16.3m.

Best actor winner Bohemian Rhapsody also saw a boost, with UK box office rising 33% on its 19th weekend of play. The Freddie Mercury biopic is a place below The Favourite in the chart, with takings of £279,000. Total is £54.2m.

Free Solo cracks all-time documentary Top 10

In percentage terms, best documentary winner Free Solo saw the biggest Oscars boost of all, rising 160% from the previous weekend. Takings of £59,000 push the total after 12 weeks to £1.87m, thus placing the film in the all-time UK Top 10 for documentaries. When you consider that three of the titles in this chart are essentially concert films (featuring Michael Jackson, One Direction and Justin Bieber), Free Solo is in seventh place among regular documentaries, behind Fahrenheit 9/11, Amy, Imax doc Deep Sea 3D, March of the Penguins, Senna and Touching the Void. A final tally above £2m for Free Solo now looks realistic.

The also-ran: The Aftermath

Qualifying as neither a flop nor a particular success, literary adaptation The Aftermath made a respectable sixth-place debut. But its £596,000 gross from an ambitious 562 cinemas yielded a weak average of £1,060. It’s discouraging for the various stakeholders (including 20th Century Fox) that more cinemagoers chose to see Green Book in its fifth weekend than The Aftermath in its first.

The Aftermath is a romantic drama set in Hamburg during the allied occupation of Germany after the end of the second world war. Marketable elements include cast (led by Keira Knightley), director (Testament of Youth’s James Kent) and the original property (Rhidian Brook’s 2013 novel).

The market

Official numbers for February make dismal reading, with box office 29% down on February 2018. This follows a disappointing January. For the first two months of the year, box office is down 24% on 2018, with a shortfall so far of £57m.

The negative pattern has continued into March, with the latest weekend recording box office 25% below the equivalent frame from 2018. That is now eight weeks in a row with takings down year on year. Cinemas have been crying out for a big hit and Captain Marvel, arriving on Friday, should be it. The character is unproven at the box office, but the Marvel brand should be enough to deliver blockbuster audiences. Alternatives include Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem in Asghar Farhadi’s Everybody Knows and Maggie Gyllenhaal in US indie The Kindergarten Teacher.

Top 10 films, 1-3 March

1. Fighting With My Family, £2,022,174 from 573 sites (new)

2. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, £1,389,726 from 621 sites. Total: £15,828,621 (four weeks)

3. Instant Family, £1,085,662 from 536 sites. Total: £8,029,102 (three weeks)

4. How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, £1,048,106 from 601 sites. Total: £17,274,691 (five weeks)

5. Green Book, £742,723 from 554 sites. Total: £7,409,253 (five weeks)

6. The Aftermath, £595,657 from 562 sites (new)

7. Alita: Battle Angel, £560,499 from 390 sites. Total: £8,622,852 (four weeks)

8. The Kid Who Would Be King, £376,644 from 478 sites. Total: £3,086,074 (three weeks)

9. Cold Pursuit, £366,278 from 415 sites. Total: £1,393,720 (two weeks)

10. Kobiety Mafii 2, £299,502 from 251 sites (new)

Other openers

La Fille du Regiment – Met Opera, £240,965 from 202 sites

Alien (40th anniversary rerelease), £129,245 from 210 sites

The Hole in the Ground, £96,403 from 140 sites

Luka Chuppi, £63,940 from 39 sites

Sauvage, £21,569 from 14 sites

Foxtrot, £21,037 from 22 sites

What They Had, £16,686 from 111 sites

Ring (4K restoration), £10,906 from 58 sites

Hannah, £8,877 from 12 sites

Sonchiriya, £8,710 from 26 sites

Kodathi Samaksham Balan Vakeel, £5,061 from 17 sites

90 ML, £4,912 from seven sites

An Engineer Imagines, £3,757 from five sites

Arandi Gopal Joshi, £1,970 from nine sites

Burning Men, £939 from two sites

LKG, £356 from six sites (Ireland only)

Serenity, no data available

• Thanks to Comscore. All figures relate to takings in UK and Ireland cinemas.