As a general rule Labor Day weekend is a bad time for movies with sales coming in well below normal. But this year it was a banner Labor Day for the box office. Blame it on high gas prices or decreased interest in travelling, but people turned out in droves and records were broken.
Transporter 2 opened with a whopping $16 million ($20 million over 4 days) which is a respectable opening for any film this year, especially a sequel (not the kind of thing a confirmed anti-sequelite like myeslef likes to hear). Tack on that this is usually a nightmare weekend and you have an incredible financial feat. In an extremely unusual turn of events, this sequel made almost as much as in its first weekend as its predecessor did in its entire run (The Transporter only made $25 million domestically.)
As icing on the cake, according to Box Office Mojo Transporter 2 is the highest ever grossing movie on any Labor Day weekend. Another movie released this weekend, The Constant Gardener, made fourth place on the all time Labor Day weekend sales chart.
Two other films that opened this weekend, but failed to make the top ten were Underclassman and A Sound of Thunder. Underclassman barely lost out to The Cave's number ten but A Sound of Thunder, suffering from zero marketing and a barrage of well deserved bad reviews, whimpered in with barely one million.
Below are the estimates both from the traditional three day weekend total and the four day Labor Day weekend totals.
| TOP TEN: Labor Day Weekend (3 Day, September 2 - 4, 2005) |
| 1. Transporter 2* - $16,500,000 ($16,500,000 ) [CB REVIEW] |
| 2. The 40-Year-Old Virgin - $13,110,000 ($68,461,000 ) [CB REVIEW] |
| 3. The Constant Gardener* - $8,577,000 ($10,299,000 ) [CB REVIEW] |
| 4. Red Eye - $7,600,000 ($43,679,000 ) [CB REVIEW] |
| 5. The Brothers Grimm - $6,822,000 ($26,522,000 ) [CB REVIEW] |
| 6. Four Brothers - $4,975,000 ($62,962,000 ) [CB REVIEW] |
| 7. Wedding Crashers - $4,675,000 ($194,652,000 ) [CB REVIEW] |
| 8. March of the Penguins - $4,205,000 ($62,210,000 ) [CB REVIEW] |
| 9. The Skeleton Key - $3,283,000 ($43,019,000 ) [CB REVIEW] |
| 10. The Cave - $2,950,000 ($10,964,000 ) [CB REVIEW] |
| * Denotes new release. |
| TOP TEN: Labor Day Weekend (4 Day, September 2 - 5, 2005) |
| 1. Transporter 2* - $20,250,000 ($20,250,000 ) [CB REVIEW] |
| 2. The 40-Year-Old Virgin - $16,550,000 ($71,901,000 ) [CB REVIEW] |
| 3. The Constant Gardener* - $10,804,000 ($12,526,000 ) [CB REVIEW] |
| 4. Red Eye - $9,300,000 ($45,379,000 ) [CB REVIEW] |
| 5. The Brothers Grimm - $7,931,000 ($27,630,000 ) [CB REVIEW] |
| 6. Four Brothers - $6,400,000 ($64,387,000 ) [CB REVIEW] |
| 7. Wedding Crashers - $5,775,000 ($195,752,000 ) [CB REVIEW] |
| 8. March of the Penguins - $5,415,000 ($63,420,000 ) [CB REVIEW] |
| 9. The Skeleton Key - $4,054,000 ($43,790,000 ) [CB REVIEW] |
| 10. The Cave - $3,700,000 ($11,714,000 ) [CB REVIEW] |
| * Denotes new release. |
