Fast and Furious sequel beats Gatsby at UK box office

Fast & Furious 6 (left) took more than twice as much as The Great Gatsby

Action sequel Fast & Furious 6 races ahead of The Great Gatsby in this week's UK and Ireland box office chart.

The latest instalment in the car-based franchise took more than £8.7m in its opening weekend, more than double the amount that Baz Luhrmann's film made between Thursday and Sunday.

Gatsby's £4.1m tally puts it just ahead of Star Trek Into Darkness, the weekend's third most profitable title.

The sci-fi sequel has now taken £15.6m since opening on 9 May.

Fast and Furious 6, which sees Vin Diesel return as fugitive race car driver Dominic Toretto, opened in 462 locations across the UK and Ireland, 60 fewer than The Great Gatsby.

On a screen by screen basis, however, the film proved much more successful, earning an average of £18,869 per screen compared to Gatsby's £7,845.

British actress Carey Mulligan, who stars alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in Luhrmann's film, attended its star-studded premiere in Cannes last week.

But the cast's promotional efforts did not help the F Scott Fitzgerald adaptation earn widespread critical acclaim, with the Daily Telegraph's Charles Moore calling it "terribly, terribly bad".

The latest instalment in Marvel's Iron Man series added £1.4m to its earnings in its fourth weekend in cinemas, taking its overall total to £33.8m.

Children's dance movie All Stars completes this week's top five, earning £196,579 in its third weekend on release.

US drama Mud, starring Matthew McConaughey as a drifter who befriends two young boys, climbs one place to six, while DreamWorks' animated comedy The Croods falls two places to seven.

Comedy 21 and Over, action thriller Olympus Has Fallen and Pedro Almodovar's I'm So Excited are ranked eighth, ninth and tenth.