LONDON — The residents of Button House have done it again — this time without a television screen to hide behind. “Ghosts: The Possession of Button House”, the big-screen spin-off of the BBC's beloved sitcom “Ghosts”, opened at No. 1 at the UK and Ireland box office this weekend, taking £2.4 million from 642 cinemas and seeing off two much louder challengers: Warner Bros.' DC horror “Clayface” and Sacha Baron Cohen's return in “Ali G: Who Iz I?”. For a British comedy whose makers believed they had closed the door on Button House for good in 2023, it is a result that counts as both a homecoming and a small industry surprise.
The figures, reported on Monday, 26 October, put the Lionsgate UK release comfortably at the top of the chart in its opening weekend. In a market where British comedies are routinely written off as television properties that cannot travel to cinemas, a homegrown horror-comedy — built entirely on a five-series-old BBC fandom — outgrossed a DC comic-book film and a returning Baron Cohen character in their shared opening frame. As UK audiences settle into the Halloween half-term, Button House, it turns out, was the haunted house they most wanted to visit.
THE NUMBERS BEHIND THE HAUNTING
The headline figure is £2.4 million — around $3.2 million — from 642 sites, a per-screen average of £3,827 that the industry title ScreenDaily described as “respectable”. Chart watchers at One Man's Movies noted that it stands as the sixth-best opening for a comedy this year in the UK and Ireland. Context matters here: the film's budget has not been officially released, although commentators have cited a figure in the region of £4 million. If that estimate is anywhere near accurate, the opening weekend alone has recovered a substantial share of the production cost before a single international sale or streaming window is counted — the kind of arithmetic that British film executives dream about and rarely get.
Behind the winner, the chart tells its own story of a crowded Halloween corridor. “Clayface” opened in second place with £1.9 million (about $2.6 million) — the UK standing as its best market outside North America. “Ali G: Who Iz I?” took third with £1.3 million (about $1.7 million) from 458 sites; Baron Cohen's return had originally been billed as a one-week-only cinema event, but the film will now hold over in some cinemas through next weekend. Laika's animated fantasy “Wildwood”, directed by Travis Knight and released by Black Bear to a record number of cinemas for the distributor, opened fourth with about $1.36 million, while Paramount's “Street Fighter” slipped to fifth in its second weekend, adding $1.35 million for a running total of $5.6 million.
A HOUSE THAT REFUSED TO STAY CLOSED
None of this was supposed to happen. “Ghosts” ran for five series on BBC One and ended with a Christmas special in 2023, closing as the most-watched comedy series of that year in the UK, with its final episode drawing 7.2 million viewers. The format has since travelled the world — the American version is now heading into its sixth season — but the original team were clear that the story was finished. “We thought we had said goodbye to Button House at the end of the final series. We never planned to come back,” the creators and writers said when the film was announced. “But when we had the idea for this story, we all got so excited that we couldn't resist returning to our haunted home for one more adventure.”
The film comes from Monumental Pictures with BBC Film, is distributed in the UK by Lionsgate, and is handled internationally by BBC Studios. Its setting remains the show's great silent character: Button House itself, played on screen by West Horsley Place, the red-brick Surrey country house whose parkland, chimneys and gently crumbling grandeur did as much as any joke to define the series. That the house is a real place — one that now hosts visitors who come specifically because of the show — is part of the property's unusual afterlife. The television audience did not just watch Button House for five years; they formed an attachment to it, and this weekend a significant number of them bought a ticket to go back.
WHY A MODEST COMEDY TOPPED A SUPERHERO WEEKEND
Several things worked in the film's favour at once. First, timing: an affectionate horror-comedy landing in the Halloween corridor, during half-term for many schools, is counter-programming with a built-in family audience — spooky enough for the season, gentle enough for everyone. Second, familiarity: five series and a much-loved Christmas finale left behind a large, warm audience that studios usually have to spend heavily to create. Third, the competition split its own vote — “Clayface” chased horror audiences while “Ali G” chased nostalgia of a different vintage — while “Ghosts” had the field's clearest identity: the nation's favourite haunted house, back for one more story. None of that guarantees a No. 1 opening, and it is worth remembering the gross is respectable rather than record-breaking. But in a year when mid-budget comedy has struggled theatrically on both sides of the Atlantic, a £2.4 million UK opening for a film of this scale is precisely the result the British industry keeps arguing is still possible.
FATHERLAND'S QUIET BREAKTHROUGH
Further down the chart came the weekend's other notable story. Mubi's “Fatherland”, from Polish director Paweł Pawlikowski, debuted at No. 9 with $264,083 from just 86 locations — a per-screen figure among the strongest of the new releases — and reached $415,017 including previews. That makes it the biggest UK and Ireland opening of Pawlikowski's career, surpassing his Oscar-winning-era success “Cold War”. It is a reminder that the same weekend can hold two very different kinds of British box-office good news: a broad popular comedy at the top, and an arthouse drama quietly posting career-best numbers at the bottom of the top ten.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT
The test for “The Possession of Button House” now is the second weekend — whether word of mouth among the series' fans converts into the holdover audiences that turn a good opening into a genuine hit, in the way “Ali G” has already secured extra bookings beyond its advertised single week. The film will not have the field to itself: Friday brings a fresh wave of releases across more than 300 locations, including Disney's documentary “Everest: The Other Side” and A24's dark comedy “Primetime” starring Robert Pattinson, alongside anniversary re-releases of “Donnie Darko” and “The Devils”. Lionsgate and the BBC will be watching the drop-off closely, because the answer carries a wider question with it: if Button House can open at No. 1, the argument that Britain's best-loved television comedy cannot work in cinemas becomes much harder to make.
For now, though, the headline is simple, and it is the one fans waited three years for. The ghosts are back, the house is full again, and British cinemagoers — given a choice between a comic-book horror, a returning Baron Cohen and the residents of Button House — chose the residents. Some hauntings, it turns out, an audience is happy to pay for.
Source note: This original BuzzDaily report is based on the UK and Ireland box office chart for the weekend reported on 26–27 October 2026, as covered by Chortle (26 October 2026, citing ScreenDaily), The Digginator and RocketNews chart reports, and One Man's Movies (27 October 2026). Figures — £2.4 million from 642 sites and a £3,827 screen average for “Ghosts: The Possession of Button House”; £1.9 million for “Clayface”; £1.3 million for “Ali G: Who Iz I?”; and “Fatherland”'s preview-inclusive $415,017 — are as reported by those outlets; dollar equivalents are as carried in the chart coverage. The film's budget has not been officially released, and the reported figure of around £4 million is attributed to commentators, not to Lionsgate or the BBC. Background — the five BBC One series ending in 2023, the final episode's 7.2 million viewers, the creators' statement on returning, and the Monumental Pictures, BBC Film, Lionsgate UK and BBC Studios roles — is drawn from the film's production announcement coverage (Geektown, February 2026) and the documented public record; West Horsley Place in Surrey is the house that plays Button House on screen. The closing assessment is BuzzDaily's own analysis. Hero photograph: West Horsley Place, Surrey — the real-life Button House — via Wikimedia Commons under a CC BY-SA 2.0 licence (file photo).