OPENINGS:  THE POSSESSION (Lionsgate) is doing quite well for a low-budget horror quickie, with $17.7M for the 1st 3 days of the holiday weekend, and is on track to be the #2 Labor Day opening ever, behind only the 2007 remake of Halloween.  LAWLESS (Weinstein Company), though, at $9.7M, is behind last year’s The [...]

  The yummiest weekend of the year for right-wing propagandists. OPENINGS:  2016:  OBAMA’S AMERICA (Rocky Mountain) drew its core audience to the tune of $6.2M, which gave it a return in the same neighborhood as recent faith-based movies like Fireproof ($6.8M), but not nearly as high as Courageous ($9.1M).  Its per-theatre average of $5700 is [...]

  A lot of product made for a decent weekend total, but none of the new films fared particularly well. OPENINGS:  THE EXPENDABLES 2 (Lionsgate) opened 20% behind its predecessor, when sequels usually open bigger (and then run out of steam faster) than the earlier films.  It’s likely to make only $75-80M in the US, and [...]

  OPENINGS:  THE BOURNE LEGACY (Universal) is holding on to its $40M opening by its fingernails, with just $265K to spare.  (We’ll find out tomorrow if that holds up.)   Bourne is an unusual action franchise that historically hasn’t overperformed internationally, and if that’s the case with Legacy as well, the picture is likely looking at [...]

  The 41% Weekend 3 drop for THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (Warners) is a bit better than Dark Knight‘s parallel 43% decline, but in actual numbers, Dark Knight‘s 3d weekend is $6.3M ahead ($42.7M vs $36.4M), and the $39M gap that separates them probably can’t be bridged. Internationally, though, Rises is at $378M in only [...]

  THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (Warners) did indeed have a big Saturday, as the preliminary numbers estimated–up 40% from Friday and fueling what should be a $63-65M 2d weekend, down about 60% from the opening.  It continues to run behind The Dark Knight, which had a $75.2M  Weekend 2 that was down only 53%, but [...]

  After a moratorium on official boxoffice pronouncements due to the tragic events in Colorado, Warners has officially released the weekend boxoffice figure for THE DARK KNIGHT RISES:  $160.9M.  This is where the unofficial weekend estimates had the picture, although it’s 10-20% below the pre-release expectations for the film.  That was also largely the case [...]

  All boxoffice figures are unofficial until tomorrow, when the studios will once again admit that they’re in a business designed to make money.  However, numbers have made their way to the outside world, and it seems clear that as midsummer Saturdays go, yesterday was slower than usual, probably by a factor of 10-20% virtually [...]