The British film industry fails to receive a much-needed lucky break

The much-hyped follow-up to The Full Monty has failed to make any impression at the box office, marking the end of a dismal summer for British films. Some homegrown movies have seen takings drop to humiliating levels.

At the same time, there has been a substantial drop in the number of big-budget films being shot in Britain by Hollywood studios and other foreign film-makers. Production figures are well down on the same period last year.

The hope had been that Lucky Break, a prison-escape comedy by Peter Cattaneo, the writer and director of The Full Monty, would lift the gloom and become a British success to challenge the American blockbusters in the school holidays. The film stars James Nesbitt, of ITV's popular drama Cold Feet, and Olivia Williams, who appeared opposite Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense.

But figures released on Wednesday show that Lucky Break failed to make the top five at the British box office on its release last week. The film, which had a star-studded gala screening at the Edinburgh Film Festival, reached only number eight in the chart, with takings of £348,000. Planet Of The Apes, which took £2.3m last week (£10.6m overall), is still at the top, followed by another Hollywood movie, Cats And Dogs, which took £1m last week (£17.1m overall).

Cattaneo said at the première of his film that comparisons with The Full Monty were inevitable, adding: "It will have a similar feel because of the director but it's more of a movie. I wanted to make a good old-fashioned escape movie."

Lucky Break has not been alone in failing to woo British film-goers in sufficient numbers. Another Life, starring Natasha Little, has been on release for most of the summer but has taken the embarrassingly low figure of £11,300. A spokesman for the film's distributor, Winchester, said: "It's a difficult market for British movies. The UK generally will only have a couple of hits a year."

One of the biggest flops of the summer has been Intimacy. All the hype over its unprecedentedly explicit sex scenes has not tempted audiences into the cinema.

And Steve Coogan's translation from TV to the big screen in The Parole Officer looks likely to be another example of a cult TV comedian failing to make the transition.

One of the most worrying failures of the season is High Heels And Low Life, starring Minnie Driver. This was the first release from Disney's British production arm; its paltry £1.5m takings will not go unnoticed by the studio's executives in Los Angeles.

The slump in takings for British films has come at the same time as a slump in big studios choosing to shoot their films in Britain. The Film Council, the government- appointed funding body for British films, blames the decline on the threat of a Hollywood strike earlier this year. A spokeswoman said: "The Americans haven't pulled out. Since we all know the strike has been averted, all the productions are coming back on line again." Indeed, the second Harry Potter film and the next James Bond are planned to shoot in Britain this autumn.

But the figures are depressing. In the first half of 2000, £220m was spent on films made in the UK. That fell to £75m in the first six months of this year.