The Three Musketeers and Real Steel square up behind Johnny English

Disney's robot fight flick and the Brit-dominated Dumas retelling post poor returns as Rowan Atkinson's spy has the last laugh.

Firing blanks … Paul Anderson's The Three Musketeers

The four-way faceoff

1. The Three Musketeers
2. Production year: 2011
3. Country: Rest of the world
4. Cert (UK): 12A
5. Runtime: 110 mins
6. Directors: Paul WS Anderson
7. Cast: Christoph Waltz, Gabriella Wilde, James Corden, Juno Temple, Logan Lerman, Luke Evans, Mads Mikkelsen, Matthew MacFadyen, Milla Jovovich, Orlando Bloom, Ray Stevenson
8. More on this film

It's unusual for so many major features to debut together at 350 cinemas or more, but the start of the October half-term holiday in the UK saw four new films enter the fray in wide release. None landed a knockout punch, with holdover titles Johnny English Reborn and The Lion King 3D convincingly remaining top choices for families.

Top newbie over the Friday-Sunday weekend period was Disney's pricey robot boxing flick Real Steel, grossing a mediocre £1.34m. But thanks to previews on Wednesday and Thursday totalling £428,000, The Three Musketeers lands one place above it in the official chart, with a five-day debut of £1.46m. Considering Real Steel opened in the US with $27.3m, the UK result is about half what you might expect. Musketeers has yet to open stateside, but the UK ought to be a key territory, considering the British-dominated cast (including Matthew Macfadyen, Luke Evans, Ray Stevenson, Orlando Bloom and James Corden) and partial British setting. It's likely that UK rights were not cheap, and it's hard to imagine its distributor being happy with the result.

However, the numbers for Real Steel and The Three Musketeers look heavenly compared to those for the other two major releases. Paramount's Footloose remake stumbled out of the gate, with £460,000 and a screen average of £1,211. Warners' Dolphin Tale, a recent box-office chart topper in the US, fared even worse, with £429,000 and a £1,118 average. Both distributors will be hoping for better midweek results during the half-term holiday.

The British casualty ward

With little for discerning adults among the big new releases, might the 14 October date offer a nice counter-programming opportunity for a plucky Brit flick? That was presumably the thinking behind the release of Albatross, First Night and Retreat, which all squeezed on to the slate. Sadly, none found much of an audience, grossing less than £15,000 between them over the weekend period, hampered to varying degrees by limited showtimes at the venues they did manage to book. With the arthouse audience still showing out for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Midnight in Paris and Drive, smaller pictures struggled. Paddy Considine's Tyrannosaur, for example, fell by more than half from its below-par debut, despite maintaining its screen count – you'd expect a stronger hold from such a well-reviewed arthouse title. Another British casualty: David Mackenzie's Perfect Sense, down 84%.

The live event

Not included in the official chart by the data gatherer, the latest production from the New York Met opera, Donizetti's Anna Bolena, saw box-office figures reported at £136,000 (and the real number is probably higher). That's not bad for a single performance on Saturday at 50 cinemas. Opera fans will evidently pay premium prices to watch prestige live productions in their local cinema, but didn't show much interest in the weekend's new release about opera. First Night, a comic romp about the staging of Mozart's Così fan tutte in an English country house, starring Richard E Grant and Sarah Brightman, debuted with a feeble £5,000 from 34 locations (a screen average of £147).

Winners and losers

Gentlest decline in the top 10 belonged to Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, dipping just 20%. The film also made a showing in the top 100 individual engagements chart, which was otherwise utterly dominated by mainstream releases Johnny English Reborn (topping the chart with its takings at London's Vue Westfield, and nabbing 65 of the 100 spots), The Lion King 3D, Real Steel and Three Musketeers. As for losers, plunging from 4th place to 12th in the box-office chart with a decline of 71%, Taylor Lautner thriller Abduction was a notable casualty. Thriller The Debt fell by a slightly bigger 74% thanks to a drastic reduction in locations from 360 to a more sensibly targeted 80. Texas Killing Fields was a weak new entrant, grossing £69,000 from just over 100 screens.

The future

Thanks to lacklustre openers, takings were 13% down on the previous weekend but nevertheless 1% up on the equivalent frame from 2010, when Despicable Me and The Social Network both started their strong runs. New releases from Friday include Steven Soderbergh's virus thriller Contagion, horror sequel Paranormal Activity 3, tween flicks Monte Carlo and Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer, plus the much-anticipated return of Lynne Ramsay with We Need to Talk About Kevin. Exhibitors, however, will be more excited about the previews next Monday and Tuesday (October 24-25) of Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, ahead of its official release on Wednesday. Rival distributors can only sit and grumble as their films are tossed out from Monday to make way.

Top 10 films

1. Johnny English Reborn, £3,072,542 from 521 sites. Total: £9,643,386
2. The Lion King 3D, £1,906,686 from 420 sites. Total: £5,949,479
3. The Three Musketeers, £1,461,251 from 485 sites (New)
4. Real Steel, £1,337,491 from 385 sites (New)
5. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, £572,806 from 369 sites. Total: £12,342,655
6. Footloose, £460,271 from 380 sites (New)
7. Dolphin Tale, £429,140 from 384 sites (New)
8. Midnight in Paris, £396,584 from 150 sites. Total: £1,283,525
9. Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, £250,542 from 204 sites. Total: £1,099,346
10. Drive, £178,230 from 104 sites. Total: £2,392,812