weekend box office

For the first time in 25 years, all the major studios sat out Labor Day weekend, resulting in a 22% drop from last year.  CinemaScore and PostTrak didn’t even bother turning up to poll audiences after screenings since nothing was new.  The total box office for this weekend will hit roughly $100M, the second worst weekend of the year… the worst being last weekend’s $69M take.  (Exhibitors– theater owners– are understandably quite unhappy.)

‘The Hitman’s Bodyguard’ managed something that no other movie accomplished this summer, staying at #1 for three straight weeks.  Not even the #1 champ ‘Wonder Woman’ managed that, nor did any other hit because they had… y’know, competition.

The Top Five remains mostly stagnant, the only change being that indie drama ‘Wind River’ swapped places with the animated family film ‘Leap!’  Everything dropped a bit from last week, but since it’s a holiday weekend, Monday’s numbers will be added in, taking everything a bit higher.  Have a look for yourself:

  1. The Hitman’s Bodyguard (Lionsgate) – (3-Day) $9.4M/(4-Day projected) $12M
  2. Annabelle: Creation (New Line/Warner Brothers) – $6.9M/$8.3M
  3. Wind River (The Weinstein Company) – $5.7M/$7.2M
  4. Leap! (The Weinstein Company) – $4.7M/$6.3M
  5. Logan Lucky (Bleecker Street) – $4.1M/$5.1M

The 40th anniversary re-release of ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ earned $1.53M over three days, playing in just 901 theaters, and is projected to come out with $2.3M once Labor Day is added in.  This theatrical release is basically just publicity for the September 22nd launch of the DVD/Blu-ray, anyway.

Similarly, Marvel TV released the pilot for ABC’s upcoming ‘Inhumans’ TV show on IMAX screens, managing to take in $1.2M 3-day/$1.5M 4-day.  ‘Inhumans’ appears to be the victim of confusing marketing, with some thinking it was a movie.  As Marvel TV’s executive vice president Jeph Loeb kept insisting, the CGI in the preview footage was not complete, so the already sub-par TV CGI looked even worse than normal.  Those thinking this was a film release obviously felt that compared to the effects in, say, ‘Guardians 2’ and ‘Doctor Strange’, ‘Inhumans’ looked like absolute garbage.

And for those who knew this was a promotion for the TV show, some felt that IMAX was too expensive and opted to wait until the show premieres for free later this month.

Next week will belong to Andres Muschietti’s ‘It’, but exactly how big will it open? Projections continue to rise.  Though critics that have screened it are still under an embargo pertaining to specifics, they are allowed to give reactions via social media and well… they freakin’ LOVE it!  Reaction to ‘It’ has been similar to that of ‘Wonder Woman’ with words like “perfection” popping up a lot.  The predicted estimations were in the $40M range but rose to around $50M.  Now that so much enthusiastic word of mouth is swirling, that figure has ballooned to $60M, and it could do even better.

At this rate, ‘It’ should easily score the biggest September opening of all time and the biggest horror opening of all time.  (‘Hannibal’ holds the latter record with a $58M debut.)

Though the box office is down year-over-year at this point, ‘It’ kicks off what should be a pretty massive fall/winter, with sure bets ‘Justice League’, ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ and ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’, in addition to potential hits like ‘Blade Runner 2049’, ‘Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle’, ‘Kingsman: The Golden Circle’ and ‘The LEGO Ninjago Movie’.  Things could still turn around.

What fall movies are you most looking forward to?

Source: Deadline