If you were waiting to see a movie till the theatres were no longer crowded, this is your weekend. Typically one of the slowest weekends of the year, the final weekend in August features three newcomers, none of which will make any kind of an impact at the box office.
Leading the limping pack of newcomers is We Are Your Friends, which is hoping to bring teens in to see Zac Efron, despite its R-rating. This film has limited appeal beyond Efron, and middling reviews (35% on Rotten Tomatoes). It’s tracking the best of the newcomers, but I still think it will struggle to get 10M.
The next biggest film is Owen Wilson’s thriller No Escape, which is also not getting great reviews (40%), and Wilson’s star has faded a lot in the past few years. He hasn’t really been an action star since Behind Enemy Lines, so this is really a gamble for him. It won’t pay off. He has a little bit of support from Lake Bell and Pierce Brosnan in supporting roles, but this is not a strong release.
Finally, War Room, a random christian drama is opening. I doubt this is a breakthrough, as I’ve seen and heard very little about it. It has no critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, but this type of film traditionally does poorly with critics. It’s just not the right weekend for a christian drama. Both Courageous and Fireproof opened in September, not August.
If you think that’s scary, Labor Day weekend looms around the corner, where the biggest opener is a Transporter reboot with a star no one’s heard of, and a Robert Redford dramedy where he goes off into the woods with Nick Nolte. It’s likely the box office won’t get a true shot in the arm until September 18th, when the Maze Runner sequel opens, and Johnny Depp’s Black Mass is released.
1) Straight Outta Compton- 14M Weekend, 133M Total
2) We Are Your Friends- 10M Weekend, 10M Total
3) Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation- 8M Weekend, 169M Total
4) No Escape- 6.5M Weekend, 8.5M Total
5) Sinister 2- 5M Weekend, 19M Total
6) The Man From UNCLE- 4.5M Weekend, 34M Total
7) Hitman: Agent 47- 4M Weekend, 15M Total
8) The Gift- 3M Weekend, 36M Total
9) American Ultra- 3M Weekend, 10M Total
10) Ant-Man- 3M Weekend, 169M Total
11) War Room- 2.5M Weekend, 2.5M Total
12) Minions- 2.5M Weekend, 324M Total
