This Labor Day weekend is shaping up to be one for the record books... except, it's not the kind of history the studios want to make. Official stats are still rolling in, but so far as the traditional weekend goes, this will be the lowest-grossing Labor Day box office in 12 years, with only one movie reaching double-digit figures in the millions and other films struggling to pad their totals. Here's the rundown:
A quick glance at this weekend's box office chart suggests that not a lot changed. Samuel L. Jackson and Ryan Reynolds' The Hitman's Bodyguard held on to the top slot of the Top 10, with the horror hit Annabelle: Creation holding on to its second-place finish. The latter has inched closer to $100 million, making it a true late-summer success and a shot in the arm for the Conjuring Cinematic Universe that James Wan is helping Warner Bros. build.
In third place, also very encouraging, is Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen's Wind River, a tense murder mystery from writer/director Taylor Sheridan. The movie took in $5.8 million domestically in its fifth week, because it has been rolling out into more theaters, building on buzz and capitalizing on the fact that people know Sheridan from his previous films, Sicario and the exquisite Hell or High Water. Wind River currently has $18M in the bank on a reported $11M budget, a tidy win for The Weinstein Company.
Beyond the top three, there wasn't much change, with movies like Logan Lucky, Dunkirk and even Spider-Man: Homecoming holding on to the same slots that they had the week before. Marvel and Sony's Spider-Man movie is doing much better than the Amazing movies in the States, coasting well above $300M at the box office and showing impressive legs. Wonder Woman, meanwhile, pushed its massive cume to $408.9M with and additional $1.9M over the holiday weekend.
There were a few unusual blips at the box office that bear note. Celebrating its 40th anniversary, Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind returned to select theaters and notched $1.8M in 901 locations. Also, the upcoming Marvel television show Inhumans tested its waters on IMAX before being available on ABC, which is a lot more than I expected people to pay for a show that they'll be able to watch for free. And after botching the marketing campaign, Weinstein finally unveiled the steamy romance Tulip Fever, with Alicia Vikander risking her marriage in order to screw Dane DeHaan. But audiences didn't turn up, as the Fever only banked $1.2M in 765 theaters. Not terrible. But not good. Which kinds up sums up this entire box office weekend, in a nutshell.
