Typically the Labor Day weekend is not a huge boon for the box office. People seem to like to spend the pseudo last summer weekend outside at the beach or at a BBQ. So it really comes as no surprise that despite a few new films the weekly box office still sputtered to unimpressive numbers.
Leading the pack this weekend is the horror film The Possession, which was a cheaply made horror film that managed to pull in over $17 Million. The first place finish and the budget beating haul make this film an immediate success by just about any standards. It won’t light the world on fire like a Saw or Paranormal Activity, but it is a win all around for just about everyone involved.
Second place went to the Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy moonshiner film, Lawless. Despite the big names attached this film was never marketed very ambitiously and thus its $10 Million weekend is actually a pretty decent win all things considered. The film is rated R and even though it stars big name actors, it was never really being positioned as a big deal as a release.
The Expendables 2 rounds out the top three with just about $9 Million on the weekend. The film has had a lot working against it, yet it has still managed two number one weekends and a pretty solid Labor Day weekend showing. Hopefully context will be a topic of conversation when they sit down and decide if they want to make an Expendables 3, because no film has been able to truly break out in the last 3 or 4 weeks at the box office.
One more interesting note from the weekend, Marvel did a last-minute re-release of Avengers for the Labor Day week. There was next to no advertising and many theaters had to squeeze it into odd times of the day just to have it back on their marquee. Despite that it still managed to pull in over almost $2 Million more and now should finish out it’s run over $620 Million total.
Next weekend should be yet another week and uninteresting Box Office frame, but things do start to pick up the week after when well advertised and anticipated movies start to get released again. Expect the Finding Nemo 3D re-release and Resident Evil: Retribution to benefit from this prolonged dead zone at the box office.
