Remember how last week I told you Labor Day weekend is usually rather soft? Well the one that comes after is even worse, so much so that it could very well be the least attended weekend of the year. With just two new films opening wide, both unimpressive to say the least, The Possession will easily take the top spot.
Horror films have a tendency to drop more than your average flick in their 2nd weekend and since The Possession is part of that genre, we could be in for a 60% drop, give or take. That means around $7 million for the Sam Raimi produced flick and a total of $31 million after 10 days in theaters. Drag Me to Hell, another genre film this time directed by Raimi himself, had $28 million at the same point in its run. For The Possession all of these numbers will mean one very important thing – it has more than doubled its budget in little over a week.
Romantic drama The Words opens in 2801 theaters with a pretty strong cast that includes: Bradley Copper, Jeremy Irons, Olivia Wilde, Dennis Quaid and Zoe Saldana. Unfortunately, maybe with the exception of Bradley Copper (somewhat), none of them are what you’d call box office draws. Then there’s the abysmal 17% Rotten Tomatoes rating, all of which makes me doubt this film could gross more than $5 million for maybe 2nd place.
Also fighting for 2nd place (with better chances if you ask me) is Lawless. This underrated crime drama has had decent weekdays which make me think it should be good for at least $5 million this weekend.
The Expendables 2 goes after 4th place with around $4 million which would bring the film to a new total of $74-75 million. In the end The Expendables 2 will probably die down with $83-85 million.
Rounding out the top 5 I have ParaNorman. Why you ask? Well it’s an animation and about the only family film out there right now. Actually scratch that, there’s also The Odd Life of Timothy Green. One of these two will be in 5th but both should gross around $3.5 million, more or less.
Also opening wide this week is The Cold Light of Day, starring Bruce Willis, Henry Cavill and Sigourney Weaver. Good cast here also but nobody knows this film is out. As far as I’ve seen, there was no marketing push for this flick, none, nada. This being one of the worst reviewed films of the year (7% right now on Rotten Tomatoes) doesn’t help its case either. It should crack the top 10 but don’t expect more than $2 million, if that.
Next week box office should look a lot better thanks to the 3D re-release of Finding Nemo and the 5th (I think, lost count) entry in the Resident Evil franchise, titled Resident Evil: Retribution. These two should easily gross more than this weekend’s Top 10.
