Weekend Estimates: Possession Leads Labor Day Weekend

September 2, 2012

Labor Day weekend is traditionally the slowest holiday weekend at the box office, so it comes as no surprise that the overall chart looks fairly weak. However, Possession is set to produce a very credible box office number, with Lionsgate estimating $17.725 million through Sunday and comfortably over $20 million for the full 4-day frame. That's hardly blockbuster level, but is considerably better than consensus predictions coming in to the weekend. Another opener, Lawless, is well behind, with Weinstein predicting $9.7 million for the Friday-Sunday portion of the weekend. Far, far behind that is this weekend's other new wide release, The Oogieloves in the BIG Balloon Adventure, which is headed for about $450,000 from 2,160 theaters and will end up in the record books for one of the poorest openings in history.

Returning films will see modest declines all round. The Odd Life of Timothy Green is set to benefit most from the holiday and is projected to be down just 15% from last weekend. Hope Springs and The Dark Knight Rises will both fall less than 20% too, and Disney's one-weekend-only expansions of The Avengers and Brave seems to have paid off with the two films making somewhat over $1.5 million and a bit under $1.5 million respectively.

Numbers for limited releases are a bit thin on the ground right now, but Sleepwalk with Me and Samsara should both top $10,000 per theater in their second weekends. Flying Swords of Dragons Gate 3D will post a creditable $90,000 in 15 locations during its first three days in theaters.

- Weekend Estimates

Bruce Nash

Filed under: Weekend Estimates, The Avengers, Brave, The Oogieloves in the BIG Balloon Adventure, The Dark Knight Rises, Hope Springs, The Odd Life of Timothy Green, The Possession, Lawless, Samsara, Sleepwalk With Me, Long men fei jia