Godzilla King of the Monsters box office is MONSTROUS in the UK as it misses Top 3

The blockbuster, which suffered mostly negative reviews from critics, generated an encouraging audience score but couldn’t compete with a healthy collection of holdovers. In its first weekend of release, it finished at No4 for the Friday-Sunday period, generating a three-day gross of £2.3 million – not including £1.2 million from Wednesday and Thursday previews. That’s hugely down on the £6.4m enjoyed by its Godzilla predecessor in 2014.

The sequel has done marginally better in the US: it came in at No1 in the domestic rankings, but still suffered a big downturn compared to the rest of the MonsterVerse.

The comfortable Number One in the UK, meanwhile, was Disney’s Aladdin remake, which sits at No1 for the second weekend running.

Its £4.9 million haul from Friday-Sunday takes its domestic total right up to £19.8 million; indicating Half Term week was very kind to it indeed.

That’s also only a 15% drop week-on-week from the weekend before (£5.7m); proving the Mena Massoud, Will Smith and Naomi Scott-fronted caper is doing far better with audience word-of-mouth than it did with critics.

The Secret Life of Pets 2 came in second place with £2.9 million in its second weekend, a hairline in front of Rocketman, which managed £2.5 million.

Screen Daily noted that the Elton John biopic performed well during the week, too, and now has a UK total of £12 million so far.

Behind Godzilla: King of the Monsters in fifth place was Detective Pikachu; achieving a fourth week in the Top 5.

Its £660,000 weekend haul takes it up to a healthy £12.5m nationwide; while John Wick: Chapter 3 added another £639,777 to hit £8m to date.

Ma, the Octavia Spencer-starring horror film, didn’t do so well: it managed just £507,901 since Friday.

The movie did far better in the US, where it took $18.3 million, finishing fourth across the weekend.

Avengers: Endgame continues to pull in punters: in its sixth week, it added another £480,000 to take its UK total up to £86.9 million.

Next weekend the market gets another big player in the form of X-Men: Dark Phoenix.

Men In Black: International, Toy Story 4 and Yesterday are also all due before the end of the month.