We have arrived at the official end of summer: Labor Day weekend. Never a blockbuster in terms of grosses, this year’s late summer crop of movies – two horror titles and a thriller – appears weaker than usual. In fact, it looks like it will take four days for the newcomers to earn what last year’s Labor Day releases made in only three.
| Title | Weekend | Total | |
| 1 | The Help | $14,200,000 | $118.6 |
| 2 | The Debt | $9,670,000 | $11.6 |
| 3 | Apollo 18 | $8,700,000 | $10.7 |
| 4 | Shark Night 3D | $8,640,000 | $10.5 |
| 5 | Rise of the Planet of the Apes | $7,800,000 | $160 |
| 6 | Colombiana | $7,400,000 | $21.9 |
| 7 | Our Idiot Brother | $5,180,000 | $15.4 |
| 8 | Don’t be Afraid of the Dark | $4,940,000 | $16.3 |
| 9 | Spy Kids 4 | $4,630,000 | $29 |
| 10 | The Smurfs | $4,000,000 | $131.9 |
Labor Day 2010 was home to box office disappointments like Machete and Going the Distance. Even so, this year’s batch of late summer hopefuls could not even rise to their very limited levels – putting this Labor Day frame on track to fall 5% behind last year’s.
On its third straight weekend at number one, The Help was down by less than 3%. The Dreamworks/Disney release, with a reported budget of $25 million, passed the $100 million mark on Tuesday, making it one of the highest-grossing summer dramas of all-time. Strange to think that just last month it seemed a stretch to say that The Help would be as successful as Eat Pray Love. Live and learn.
Of the three new titles, Focus Features’ The Debt was strongest, even though its estimated three-day total looked fairly anemic – even by late-summer standards. Rising from fourth place on Friday to second by Sunday, the R-rated thriller took in $9.6 million from 1,826 locations: a much smaller theatre count than the weekend’s other two new arrivals. Tempering the good news for The Debt, however, is the fact that on this same weekend in 2010 Focus Features brought in $13.1 million for the George Clooney thriller The American. As almost no one considers that film a hit, The Debt seems destined to drop off the radar just as quickly.
Friday saw a photo finish for the weekend’s two new horror titles: Apollo 18 and Shark Night 3D. Interestingly, the two films are also running neck and neck with critics; with each earning a 24% rotten reading on Rotten Tomatoes. Though August can be a good place to release a horror movie, nothing about Apollo 18 or Shark Night 3D promised a surprise hit in the making.
Though the two films have continued to run neck and neck, the Dimension/Weinstein space scarer Apollo had the higher screen count (3,328) so could be considered the bigger disappointment. Then again, the film was an inexpensive acquisition for the studio (before marketing) so folks there are claiming to be “pretty happy” with the opening.
As for Shark Night 3D, Relativity has not released a budget for their film. Last summer’s Piranha 3D cost $24 million and brought in $10.1 million in its first three days – about where the estimates are putting this year’s sea-based horror feature after four. Though Shark Night opened in fewer locations (2,806) it had the “3D’ price-premium accounting for 86% of its estimated weekend gross, meaning it should have come out stronger than Apollo 18. In the end, though, why argue about which regrettable horror movie is stronger? If their estimates are any indication, no one really cares either way.
Next weekend Warner Brothers will officially kick off fall with Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion. Here’s hoping that all goes as planned and the thriller knocks The Help out of first place… not to take anything away from that fim’s stunning success but I would really like to have something new to write about.
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The Debt could have some legs. If not in the theater than at home. It’s a solid and involving movie. The one caveat is that the ending just doesn’t fit the rest of the film. And by ending I mean the point at which the screen goes black and the credits roll. Everything is so carefully shown in detail, that to stop at that point without a denouement was disappointing to me and my wife.
From the trailers Contagion looks intense, depressingly plausible and without a hopeful point. I’m sure it’s great and all, but I’m not rushing out to see it.
thanks aaron
Imbecile
One of the year’s best films, Warrior will be No. 1 next week and there will be Oscars for all involved.
It’s written in the stars.
I hope that Hollywood doesn’t think that, just because The Help was a hit, that moviegoers want all sorts of movies set in the 1950s that deal with social issues of the time… in a sentimental, nostalgic, watered-down way.
But I can’t but help think that’s what will be hitting the box office.
If there’s one thing that Hollywood has been good at, it’s milking something until far past its expiration date… far past the point where there’s a moviegoer backlash.
If Mel Gibson’s The Beaver had been a hit, we’d see a whole bunch of similar movies about guys with animal puppets on their hands. Hollywood probably would have made a movie version of Too Close for Comfort just because the main character had a cow puppet he’d draw with.