OPENINGS: THE POSSESSION (Lionsgate) is doing quite well for a low-budget horror quickie, with $17.7M for the 1st 3 days of the holiday weekend, and is on track to be the #2 Labor Day opening ever, behind only the 2007 remake of Halloween. LAWLESS (Weinstein Company), though, at $9.7M, is behind last year’s The Debt and considerably below The American from 2 years ago. OOGIELOVES IN THE BIG BALLOON ADVENTURE (Visselman) has achieved its own little piece of immortality, with the worst opening ever for a movie playing at over 2000 theatres.
HOLDOVERS: THE EXPENDABLES 2 (Lionsgate) has the lead among older titles, but it also had the biggest cosmetic drop in the Top 10 with 34%. (Overseas, it seems to be heading for a total of about $125M, which would be down a significant 25% from its predecessor.) However, the weekend’s real loser by far was 2016: OBAMA’S AMERICA (Rocky Mountain), which masked its plummet by adding 650 screens but saw its per-theatre number nosedive 51% from last week. Everything else in the market, helped by the holiday and weak new titles, fell under 30% for the weekend, except last week’s openings PREMIUM RUSH (Sony) and HIT & RUN (Open Road), which fell 35% and 42%, respectively. THE BOURNE LEGACY (Universal) is holding well, and should get to $110M or so in the US, but it doesn’t look to be overperforming internationally, and with a $125M budget, it badly needed that to keep the franchise going. TED (Universal), on the other hand, is already at $168M overseas with 40% of the world still to open.
A couple of long-running milestones this weekend: THE AVENGERS (Disney) hit $1.5B worldwide (behind only James Cameron’s pair of epics), and THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (Warners) reached $1B (specifically $1.005B). In the case of Rises, that’s a double milestone, as it also puts this year’s installment ahead of Dark Knight‘s $1.003B, with some gas still left in the tank, thanks especially to a $28.5M China opening this week. Rises is at #12 on the all-time list worldwide, and still has a chance to rise as high as #7. Also worth noting: on the same weekend that Rises grossed $28.5M in China, THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (Sony), thanks to 3D ticket prices, made $33.3M, underscoring what a giant market China is becoming for movies.
LIMITED RELEASE: Not a lot going on this weekend. FOR A GOOD TIME, CALL… (Focus/Universal), with very limited support from its studio, had a $6100 average in 23 theatres. SAMSARA (Oscilloscope), boosted by its 70mm format, averaged $12.5K in 9 theatres. CELESTE & JESSE FOREVER (Sony Classics) leaped off the diving board into 586 theatres and only found a per-theatre average of $1200. ROBOT & FRANK (Goldwyn) took things much more slowly and had a $4800 average at 144. SLEEPWALK WITH ME (IFC) held very nicely, with an $11.4K average at 29 (it’s also available on VOD).
About the Author
