|
 |
 | | | | | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| | You are in: Entertainment: Film | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | | Tuesday, 17 April, 2001, 13:34 GMT 14:34 UK Bridget breaks box office record  Three's company: Bridget Jones's love triangle The comedy Bridget Jones's Diary has taken more than �5.7m at the UK box office in its first weekend, the most successful ever opening for a British film. The film, starring Renee Zellweger, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth, beat the previous record held by Notting Hill, also starring Grant, which pulled in �5m at the box office.
Takings for Bridget Jones's Diary, based on the popular book by Helen Fielding, were helped by two days of preview screenings on 11 and 12 April. The British box office record for international films is held by the fourth Star Wars movie, The Phantom Menace, which took �9.5m in its opening weekend. Spoof column Bridget Jones's Diary began life as a spoof column by Fielding in The Independent, on which she then based a novel. The book has sold more than four million copies worldwide, with 1.5m sales in the UK alone. The comedy has also performed well in the US box office charts where it opened at number three, taking $10.8m (�7.5m). Next week the film will be rolled out to a thousand more screens in the US. | | See also:  Internet links: The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites Top Film stories now:  Links to more Film stories are at the foot of the page. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Links to more Film stories |
 | | ^^ Back to top News Front Page | World | UK | UK Politics | Business | Sci/Tech | Health | Education | Entertainment | Talking Point | In Depth | AudioVideo ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To BBC Sport>> | To BBC Weather>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © MMIII|News Sources|Privacy  |
E-mail this story to a friend