I, Daniel Blake scores impressive result at UK box office as Trolls takes top spot

DreamWorks animation scares up a £5.44m debut and forceful marketing delivers handsome opening for Ken Loach’s arthouse hit.

The indie winner: I, Daniel Blake

It won the Palme d’Or in Cannes, comes from a beloved British auteur and has garnered critical acclaim, but would Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake prove too tough a sell for cinema audiences? If UK distributor eOne had any qualms, they have surely evaporated now that I, Daniel Blake has opened with an impressive £404,000 from 94 cinemas, and £445,000 including previews. Stripping out the previews, site average is a very robust £4,298.

Loach’s most recent previous feature, Jimmy’s Hall, from 2014, was a relative commercial disappointment, achieving £543,000 in its lifetime (its full theatrical run). Before that, he had documentary The Spirit of ’45 (£236,000 lifetime). Then there was 2012’s The Angels’ Share, which eOne successfully positioned as a mainstream comedy in Scotland and as an arthouse title in the rest of the UK, achieving a total of £1.98m. Loach’s biggest-ever hit in his home market remains The Wind That Shakes the Barley (£3.91m), a particular success that may be attributed to the fact that the UK and Ireland is one combined box office territory, and this Irish revolutionary tale scored huge numbers in the Republic.

The challenge for eOne with I, Daniel Blake was to position the film as inspiring rather than depressing angry-making, and the film’s rousing marketing image, with the graffiti title treatment and lead actor Dave Johns’ defiant raised left fist, has evidently punched through that feeling to audiences.

BACKGROUND ON KEN LOACH:
Has spent his life dedicated to making social realist films witch potray the hardships of the socially dispossessed and disprivileged, aimed at telling honest and simple stories about the working class.
He started with directing TV films for the BBC anthology series, "The Wednesday Play", a time when the BBC were starting to increase the repertoire of working class employees. Loach and his collaborating producer Tony Gardner set out to furthen the horizons of the BBC portrayal of society from just focusing on the upper and middle classes.
These first few TV plays most famously included "Cathy Come Home", a play about the fall of a young couple  and their children into homelessness. It caused both praise and controversy, and led to more awareness from the public and media into the subject, as well as questions being raised in Parliament. However, in terms of practical effect, Ken Loach himself has said it had little influence "other than changing rules so that homeless fathers could stay with their wives and children in hostels".
He later went on to direct films such as "Kes" (1969), "My Name Is Joe" (1998) and "Sweet Sixteen" (2002), as well as documentaries such as "McLibel" (2005).
He was intending to retire in 2014 after "Jimmy's Hall" , but soon made remarks about having another film project idea, an idea for which he gained much enthusiasm after the Conservatives won a landslide majority in the 2015 general election (commented by Loach on a documentary looking back on his films "Versus - The Life and Films of Ken Loach" with: "B*****ds".)