Neither Bradley Cooper, Bruce Willis, or the triumphant return of a young Harrison Ford could help rescue the post-Labor Day weekend frame at the North American box office.
Not a single film touched the $10 million mark. Blame a couple of awful new releases, lame leftovers from the summer or the start of the NFL football season, people avoided the multiplexes like the plague. In fact, the last time the box office was this bad was four years ago this week when the Nicolas Cage turkey Bangkok Dangerous opened with $10.1 million. Should the top ten estimated haul of $52 million holds, it will be the single worst weekend for the movie industry since the September 21-23 weekend following the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
After earning $17.7 million over the Labor Day holiday weekend, the Lionsgate horror flick The Possession held its top spot despite sliding 56% this weekend to earn an estimated $9.5 million from 2,834 theaters. While the numbers are hardly celebratory, the percentage slide is a bit on the light side given the horror genre. After ten days, the film has earned an okay $33.3 million and could finish near the $50 million mark.
In second place was the Weinstein Company’s prohibition drama Lawless, which also had a decent hold from last weekend (-40%) but still posted numbers on the weak side. After twelve days, the Tom Hardy film has earned $24 million following a $6 million weekend from 3,138 theaters.
In third place was the first of two films making their debuts, CBS Films’ The Words starring Bradley Cooper, Zoe Saldana, Olivia Wilde and Dennis Quaid. The literary drama was gutted by critics, who gave the film a 16% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But even if critics championed the movie as one of the year’s best, chances would be slim-to-none that the movie would show any sort of financial longevity. The $6 million production, which CBS Films picked up for $2 million at the Sundance Film Festival, only managed $5 million in its first three days from 2,801 theaters for a pathetic per-screen average of $1,785.
The second new film to open in wide release this weekend was Summit Entertainment and Lionsgate Entertainment’s The Cold Light of Day starring Henry Cavill, Sigourney Weaver and Bruce Willis. The lightly marketed and critically panned film opened on 1,511 screens and croaked out a dismal $1.8 million in its first three days, which wasn’t even enough to land in a top ten as wretched as this one.
Paramount reissued its 1981 classic Raiders of the Lost Ark starring Harrison Ford on 246 IMAX screens this weekend for a limited one-week run ahead of its September 18 Blu-ray release. The film earned a good $1.7 million for a decent $6,461 per screen average despite a kids get in free promotion.
In fourth and fifth place were two August mid-level hits collecting some leftover cash. Lionsgate’s The Expendables 2 earned an estimated $4.7 million to bring its overall domestic total to the $75.4 million mark. Universal’s The Bourne Legacy finally cracked the $100 million club this weekend as the Jeremy Renner thriller earned an estimated $4 million. Off 45%, the movie has earned $103.7 million and should wrap up its run around the $115 mark or roughly half of what 2007’s The Bourne Ultimatum pulled in during its run.
The remainder of the top ten was as follows:
6. ParaNorman (Focus Features) $3.8 million; $45 million
7. The Odd Life of Timothy Green (Disney) $3.6 million; $43 million
8. The Campaign (Warner Brothers) $3.5 million; $79.4 million
9. The Dark Knight Rises (Warner) $3.28 million; $437.8 million
10. 2016: Obama’s America (Rocky Mountain) $3.2 million; $26 million
Next weekend the box office should show more life than what Bradley Cooper and Zoe Zaldana were able to inject into it thanks to the debuts of Sony’s Resident Evil: Retribution and Disney’s 3D reissue of Finding Nemo.
– Shawn Fitzgerald
