SHOWBUZZDAILY EARLY FRIDAY BOXOFFICE – 8/31/12

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The traditionally dreary Labor Day Weekend boxoffice is underway, and preliminary numbers at Deadline have THE POSSESSION (Lionsgate) in the lead, with a $5.5M Friday and probably around $18M for the 4-day holiday weekend.  Possession, which is sort of The Exorcist plus Hasidim, has the advantage over last year’s holiday, when Apollo 18 and Shark Night had to split the low-budget horror movie crowd. LAWLESS (Weinstein Company) is in 2d place with a $2.8M Friday and probably $13-14M over the 4-day weekend (plus $2M for its Wed-Thurs early opening days).  That would put it slightly ahead of last year’s The Debt‘s $12.9M over the holiday, and a bit behind The American‘s $16.7M 2 years ago, making it a very stable weekend for that particular adult-action subgenre.  The only other opening was the genuinely pathetic OOGIELOVES IN THE BIG BALLOON ADVENTURE (Visselman), which may not even make $1M in over 2000 theatres over the 4-day weekend.  That could earn it a place as one of the worst per-theatre openings in American cinema history.

Despite a 70% increase in theatre count and millions in free publicity all week, 2016:  OBAMA’S AMERICA (Rocky Mountain) is quickly running out of right-wing obsessives, with a Friday that was 30% behind last week’s.  Even with its very wide expansion, it’s on track to make less on this 4-day weekend than it did last week in 3 days.  THE EXPENDABLES 2 (Lionsgate) leads the holdovers and seems to be on the road to $85-90M total boxoffice, 10-15% below its predecessor.  THE BOURNE LEGACY (Universal) is slowing its decline in the absence of any strong new competition, and could get to $110M total.  PARANORMAN (Focus/Universal), HOPE SPRINGS (Sony) and THE ODD LIFE OF TIMOTHY GREEN (Disney) all had $1-1.5M Fridays and should all reach $50-60M by the time they’re done.