Weekend box office: The Words and Cold Light of Day struggle
You can’t read too much into the poor showings of every new film at the weekend box office. September is usually a rough box office month and most of the films released at this time are films the studios don’t know what to do with. THE WORDS is a good example; it has a big star in Bradley Cooper, but it won’t appeal to a mass audience and probably isn’t strong enough to get any award recognition. So it was either a September or February release. COLD LIGHT OF DAY is another interesting example since the only thing it has going for it is that it stars future Superman Henry Cavill. But no one cares yet because no one has seen MAN OF STEEL. Probably the best option of the weekend was to catch RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK in an IMAX theater. I’m just as annoyed as the next guy with all the re-releasing of old films, but seeing Raiders in a huge IMAX theater is a good time.
None of the newcomers were able to dethrone last week’s #1 film, THE POSSESSION. LAWLESS and THE EXPENDABLES 2 continued in the top 5, but neither film has really lived up to its box office expectations. Next week sees the release of Paul Thomas Anderson’s THE MASTER, yet another RESIDENT EVIL film and a 3D re-release of FINDING NEMO. THE MASTER is clearly the film to see, but I can’t imagine it cracking the top ten given its subject matter. Hopefully, the film will get attention come awards season. Note: the numbers below will be updated as they become final.
1. The Possession $9.5m
2. Lawless $6m
3. The Words $5m
4. The Expendables 2 $4.7m
5. The Bourne Legacy $4m
6. ParaNorman $3.8m
7. The Odd Life of Timothy Green $3.6m
8. The Campaign $3.5m
9. The Dark Knight Rises $3.3m
10. 2016 Obama’s America $3.3m
(Deadline)
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