Labor Day weekend is the traditional close of the summer movie season and this Labor Day saw no shortage of new films being dumped into the marketplace for a last ditch effort at making a few summer dollars. Most of the new films met with failure, however, enabling Robert Downey, Jr., who opened the summer at number one with Iron Man, close out the summer at number one with Tropic Thunder.
Tropic Thunder only grossed an estimated $14.3M over the four-day Friday-to-Monday holiday weekend, but that was good enough for first place. This marked the third consecutive weekend that Tropic Thunder has taken the top spot. The film’s three day take of $11.5M was down only 29% from last weekend. After 18 days of release the film has now grossed $86.6M and should finish with around $110M.
Fox finished off a miserable summer with yet another disappointment. Second place went to the Vin Diesel driven sci-fi actioner Babylon A.D. The film brought in only $9.6M over the three day period ($12M over four) and averaged only $2,822 per location. The movie was not helped by the fact that the director has been telling everyone who will listen that Fox screwed him and the film over in editing. This will mark the first time in eleven years that Fox will finish the summer without a $100M movie.
The Dark Knight managed to move up a spot to third place this weekend with a box office take of $11M. It smashed through the $500M mark on Sunday, it’s 45th day of release and has sold approximately 70 million tickets beating out Spider-Man which sold around 69 million tickets in 2002. It looks to finish with around $525M domestically which translates to around 74 million tickets sold.
The House Bunny, budgeted at just $25M, came in fourth place with an estimated $10.2M over four days in its second weekend. The Anna Farris film has grossed a solid $29.8M in 11 days and could finish with around $45M.
Don Cheadle’s political thriller Traitor opened respectably in fifth place. The film grossed $10M over the long weekend and $11.5M since opening on Wednesday, but it was only in 2,054 theaters and averaged a solid $4,869 over the four days (second best average of the weekend).
Jason Statham’s Death Race died in sixth place. His latest offering grossed only $8.2M over the long weekend and has grossed $25M in 11 days. The $45M film looks to be headed for a final tally of around $35-40M.
Moviegoers finally (finally!) had enough of the stupid spoof films from Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg. Disaster Movie tanked in seventh place for the weekend. Opening in 2,642 locations, the movie grossed just $6.9M over the long weekend for a week $2,604 average. The opening was only a third as good as the openings for their most recent hits Meet the Spartans and Epic Movie which both opened at number one with $18.5M and $18.6M, respectively.
Rounding out the top ten:
- 8. Mamma Mia! - $5.8M - up 34% - $132.9M cume
- 9. Pineapple Express - $4.5M - down 18% - $80.9M cume
- 10. Vicky Cristina Barcelona - $3.5M - up 18% - $13.3M cume
Two new releases finished outside the top ten this week; both R-rated comedies.
College started advertising late and failed to find an audience bringing in only $2.6M from 2,123 locations for a rotten $1,241 four-day average.
Focus expanded the Sundance acquisition Hamlet 2 from 103 to 1,597 theaters in the second weekend and discovered a flop. They paid $10M for the rights to the film and managed to only gross $2.1M for a dreadful four-day average of just $1,330. Maybe someone should have told them that advertising a movie with a song called “Rock Me Sexy Jesus” probably wasn’t the way to win over mainstream America. Seriously, do these people actually get paid for this stuff?
Overall, the top ten films grossed $86.4M over the four day period which was 24% less than last year when Halloween opened at number one with $30.6M and down 3% from 2006 when Invincible was number one in its second week with $15.4M.
Weekend Box Office (August 29–September 1, 2008)
Next week, Nicolas Cage will attempt to prove my theory that his acting ability declines as his hair gets longer when Bangkok Dangerous looks to take the top spot away from Tropic Thunder.
Is there something wrong with me if I have never heard of The House Bunny until your box office recap???
I've been saying it all along and I think its fair to say you can stop with the first line of “Is there something wrong with me …”
=P
bah… stoopid nesting
Is there something wrong with me that I have heard of the House Bunny?
Is there something wrong with me that I have heard of The House Bunny?
Why do they keep making those stupid spoof movies? The Scary movies were the only ones that really worked.
What's it about?
It's that silly Anna Faris movie, where she becomes a den-mother-type to a sorority house.
It seems like the makers of Babylone AD tried really hard to combine the Fifth Element and Minority Report into Vin Diesel flick