If old man Biff Tannen gave me a box office almanac from 2015 that claimed that ‘The Possession’ would be the top movie for two consecutive weekends, I wouldn’t have believed the old kook. However, with such a weak slate of new movies opening against it this week, this seemingly impossible feat has become a reality.
The weekend’s Top 12 accumulated a pathetic combined total of only $51.9 million, which gave the $9.5 million second weekend for ‘The Possession‘ the #1 spot. Week-old ‘Lawless‘ also held its second-place rank with $6 million. New release ‘The Words‘ couldn’t land better than third with its $5 million opening. Box Office Mojo notes that this marks the second box office dud in three weeks for Bradley Cooper (the other being the hit-and-miss ‘Hit & Run’), and that it’s unlikely that ‘The Words’ will cross $15 million by the time it leaves theaters.
After four weekends, ‘The Expendables 2‘ slipped to fourth place with $4.7 million and has now grossed more than $75 million. Rounding out the Top 5 was the five-week-old ‘The Bourne Legacy‘, which has passed the $100 million mark with its $4 million weekend.
‘The Cold Light of Day‘ debuted in the 13th spot with $1.8 million. Lead actor Henry Cavill is far from being a super man yet. Trailing right behind that with $1.7 million was the new remastered version of the classic adventure flick ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark‘, which has been given a one-week limited IMAX theatrical run just prior to its Sept. 18th Blu-ray release. The $6,461 per-screen average for ‘Raiders’ is more than $3,000 higher than any movie that ranked above it this weekend.
On 307 screens, the futuristic sci-fi action flick ‘Branded‘ only earned $251,000 in total, or $818 per screen.
Even after playing On Demand for weeks, ‘Bachelorette‘ featured a higher per-screen average ($4,064) than anything in the Top 10. Not including its streaming grosses, ‘Bachelorette’ earned $191,000 on 47 screens.
Top 10:
1. ‘The Possession’ (Lionsgate) – $9,500,000
2. ‘Lawless’ (Weinstein) – $6,002,000
3. ‘The Words’ (CBS) – $5,000,000
4. ‘The Expendables 2’ (Lionsgate) – $4,750,000
5. ‘The Bourne Legacy’ (Universal) – $4,000,000
6. ‘ParaNorman’ (Focus) – $3,830,000
7. ‘The Odd Life of Timothy Green’ (Buena Vista) – $3,650,000
8. ‘The Campaign’ (Warner Bros.) – $3,530,000
9. ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ (Warner Bros.) – $3,285,000
10. ‘2016: Obama’s America’ (Rocky Mountain) – $3,281,000
JM
‘Raiders of the Lost Ark‘ stole half the IMAX gold they hoped for.
‘Total Recall’ is already profitable.
And ‘2016: Obama’s America’ has out-grossed ‘An Inconvenient Truth.’
Talk about a string of probable impossibilities…
The only thing making sense these days are the TIFF reviews of ‘Seven Psychopaths.’