Overall the summer movie season looks to be down 2-3% from last year, though it should be noted that in unadjusted dollars it is the eighth biggest summer in modern box office history. Still, 2019 is now at least 6% below 2018’s record box office pace, and this Labor Day weekend didn’t help the cause at all, with the total of the top twelve films down 33.7% from the same frame in 2018 when Crazy Rich Asians topped the charts for the third straight weekend with nearly $22 million.
Angel Has Fallen, the third film in the “Fallen” franchise, should end the 4-day weekend with $14.5 million and a domestic total of close to $44 million. The fact that this Gerard Butler opus dropped just 46% is good news, but it will face an increasingly competitive marketplace starting with the release of It, Chapter 2 on Friday.
The R-rated comedy Good Boys remained in second place dropping just 21% over the three-day weekend, earning $9.19 million. With $11.6 million expected for the 4 days, Good Boys should finish the holiday with $58.5 million—a rare, and much-needed win for the R-rated comedy genre.
Disney’s photo realistic rendering of The Lion King dropped just 16.8% in its seventh weekend of release, adding $6.7 million to bring its domestic total to a mammoth $521 million. With a global total of $1.56 billion, this version of The Lion King is now the seventh biggest box office hit of all time (not adjusting for inflation, but still very impressive).
The Fast and Furious spin-off Hobbs & Shaw finished in fourth and should be near $159 million by the end of Monday. While it still lags behind John Wick 3 ($171 million) in the race for action film of the summer here in North America, it has done very well overseas ($525 million for a global total of $684.2 million).
Fifth place went to the faith-themed film Overcomer, which should finish the weekend with nearly $19 million.
The big news in the bottom half of the top ten was Sony’s re-release of Spider-Man: Far From Home with four minutes of extra footage in over 3,000 theaters, a move which should add $5.4 million and bring the film’s domestic total to $386 million.
This weekend’s two new films were released in just 900-1000 theaters to little effect. The Blumhouse thriller Don’t Let Go should end the 4-day weekend with $3 million, while the faith-themed motocross film Bennett’s War posted one of the worst showings ever for a film released in more than 600 theaters, earning just $580,000 over the 4-day holiday weekend.
Be sure to check back here next week for the start of the fall movie season, the first frame of which belongs entirely to It: Chapter Two, which will bow in over 4,400 theaters with some analysts predicting an improvement over the massive $123 million opening of the installment of the Stephen King adaptation.
