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Weekend Box Office Report: 'The Possession' Labor Day Debut Is A Frightening Success

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The Possession, a Sam Raimi-produced horror movie, overperformed at the box office this weekend, setting the film up to capture one of the top Labor Day openings of all time.

The movie raked an estimated $17.7 million, making it the top grossing movie of the holiday. Lionsgate is expecting revenues to reach $21.3 million during the four-day opening. That would put The Possession just ahead of the movie with the second highest Labor Day opener of all time, Transporter 2 ($20.1 million).

With a haul of $30.6 million in 2007, Halloween had the No. 1 Labor Day Opener of all time. Lionsgate should be very happy with the performance of The Possession, which only cost in the low-teen millions to make. Also, the studio’s films accounted for 26 percent of the holiday market share, thanks to the The Possession and Expendables 2.

The film stars Kyra Sedgwick, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Natasha Calis and was directed by Ole Bornedal. It received a B CinemaScore and targeted young girls and women. Females made up 59 percent of the audience, while 54 percent of those buying tickets were younger than 25. The film also is over-indexing in Hispanic Catholic markets.

Strong ticket sales resulted in the overall Labor Day revenue being virtually on par with last year’s numbers.

John Hillcoat’s Prohibition-era drama Lawless, which opened Wednesday, grossed $9.8 million during the holiday weekend to claim the No. 2 spot at the box office. The film’s six-day opening is expected to top out in the $14.5 million to $15 million range.

Produced by The Weinstein Co., Lawless stars Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf, Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Guy Pearce and Mia Wasikowska.

2016: Obama’s America,  the Anti-Barack Obama documentary, finish the Labor Day holiday with an impressive domestic haul of  roughly $20 million, the fifth-best domestic performance by a political documentary.

Kids movie The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure had the  second worst debut of all time by a film showing in 2,160 theaters. The independently financed film, which opened on Wednesday, is expected to finish its six day debut at around $700,000 . This means the movie flopped out an average of $324 per theater.

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