'Possession' wins long weekend, and 'Oogieloves' sets new record for worst opening

The Labor Day weekend is usually a quiet one at the box office, and this year was no exception. The Possession scared up $21.3 million over the four-day period, performing well for the time period. The horror movie actually posted the second-best debut ever for the end-of-the-summer
holiday. Audiences gave the Jewish-themed devil possession a "B" rating, which is good for a genre that usually tops out in the "B+" range.

The Weinstein Co. made a wise decision with Lawless, the Prohibition-set picture that earned $13 million over the long weekend. Despite the top cast, which includes Shia LaBeouf, Jessica Chastain, Mia Wasikowska, Gary Oldman, Guy Pearce and Tom Hardy, I wasn't so warm on the super-violent picture.
Rotten Tomatoes critics gave is a 65% positive rating, while Metacritic had a lower 58% rating. Even the good reviews were full of caveats. An opening on the Wednesday before Labor Day has been a hot placement for adult-themed pictures in the past two years. Lawless opened ahead of The Debt (which had a five-day total of $14.7 million to Lawless' $15.1 million), but behind The American, which earned $19.8 million during the same period in 2010.

The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure unseated 2008's Delgo from its #1 spot on the list of worst openings on more than 2,000 screens. The preschooler-targeted feature earned $601,000 over the four-day period. Its per-screen average of $278 would put an average of ten people in a theatre per day--which
means just one or two people showed up at each screening. That's pretty bad, especially for a movie that encourages viewing tykes to get up and dance.

2016: Obama's America stayed in the top ten with another $5.5 million as it added another 656 theatres. So far, the conservative picture is holding similar to its left-of-center counterparts, like Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.

Hope Springs, which held on to the last spot in the top ten, is confirmed as a sleeper success. Pulling in $4.7 million, the Meryl Streep-led picture has earned $53 million to date. The week-to-week drop tightened up from the 30% range to just 17% over the three-day period. Strong holds like this week's will give this light-hearted romance an extremely long tail.

The fun and irreverent For A Good Time, Call... gambled a bit with a wider, 23-screen release. The $8,000 per-screen average exceeds all of the movies in the top ten, but it's on the low side
for specialty releases. However, most specialty releases only open on a couple of screens, so the future of this comedy is harder to gauge.

Flying Swords of Dragon Gate posted a similar per-screen average, $8,300, opening on fifteen screens. Because the release was in 3D and IMAX, which charge higher prices, this Chinese epic actually performed a bit worse than For A Good, Time, Call... Still, America is probably one of the smaller markets for the fight scene-heavy feature, which has already earned many times that in Southeast Asian markets.

This Friday, an author steals an unknown's work in The Words, Bachelorette moves from VOD to theatres, and guns are drawn in The Cold Light of Day.

'Lawless' and 'Oogieloves' close out the summer

Leading the box office is the chiller The Possession (2,816 theatres), a "Jewish-themed Exorcist" with "cheap scares." THR's Frank Scheck cheekily predicts that "if nothing else," it should "discourage the practice of buying antique wooden boxes at flea markets." A nice teen-million debut
should be in store for the movie, which hopefully has better luck than The Apparition, which opened last weekend to a lackluster $2.8 million.

The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure will be competing for the title of biggest flop this weekend. The movie, which targets kids from ages 3-5, opened to a shockingly low $47 per-screen average on Wednesday. The release on 2,160 screens is way too big for this kind of movie. It will probably earn something in the $5 million
range over the four-day weekend. That's still a pittance compared to the $55 million marketing and production budget. How does a movie featuring nobodies in costumes cost that much money? I'm seriously confused about this tot-centered picture, though I bet it will do well in the home video market, where parents can let their kids watch the movie in the other room without being forced to devote their whole attention to content that's way above them.

The uber-violent Lawless (2,565 theatres), which opened on Wednesday to $1.1 million, should end up in the teen millions. With the popularity of "Boardwalk Empire," I was excited to see another Prohibition-set movie, but I found
the shoot and knife 'em ups to be unnecessarily gruesome. FJI's Daniel Eagan faults the "glum, pompous drama," and also notes there are far better TV shows (he mentions "Breaking Bad" and "Justified") that elicit more powerful reactions in viewers.

Also not to be overlooked is 2016: Obama's America. The political doc has earned $12.3 million to date, $10 million of which came after last Friday's expansion. Most trackers aren't used to predicting a movie with these kinds of demographics, so another big weekend could be in store for the conservative movie.

To lure infrequent moviegoers who may not be caught up on this summer's blockbusters (or who want to see them again), Disney is expanding the releases of The Avengers and Brave. The superhero movie will play in 1,700 theatres, up from 123. Brave will also move into 1,700 theatres, from 423 locations.

For a Good Time, Call... (23 theatres) is the tale of two enemies-turned-friends who start a
phone-sex line business in their apartment. It sounds raunchy, but it's actually a surprisingly engaging story of twentysomething female friendship (with some sex-toy sight gags thrown in). FJI's David Noh agrees, dubbing the "carefree and affectionate" movie a "rather winning little female-fueled comedy." Ari Graynor is particularly sharp in her role, in a rare upgrade from the supporting roles she usually plays.

On Tuesday, we'll give a rundown of how everything did in what's usually one of the slowest holiday periods for the box office.

Director Terrence Malick suddenly prolific, with three movies in queue

By Sarah Sluis

After waiting years for writer/director Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, I was a bit underwhelmed when it came out this May. What's wrong with a little narrative? Even so, Malick remains my favorite working director. No one else captures (or even cares about!) natural imagery the way he does. His films are like watching a "Planet Earth" that's subsumed to the narrative of the humans around the creatures and vistas.

Malick is famously private and refuses to give interviews to the press. Until The Tree of Life, he also had a perfect track record (at least in my book). Given how few films he's created, I suspect he's a perfectionist. I wonder if mixed opinions about his latest work somehow freed him from a fear of failure, because he now has three projects in the works.

The first has already filmed and supposedly will be edited by 2012 (though Malick is a notoriously slow editor, often using the cutting room to transform the work).Today, the Los Angeles Times was able to scrounge up details about the plot. Ben Affleck stars as a philanderer who goes to Paris, encounters a European woman (Olga Kurylenko) and brings her home, marrying her for visa reasons. With the romance fizzling, he takes up with a hometown girl (Rachel McAdams) with whom he has a history. Javier Bardem plays a priest Affleck's character consults about his raffish ways.

Malick's other two projects will shoot back-to-back in 2012. Lawless stars Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara and Haley Bennett, who may be Malick's latest ingnue (he has cast unknowns such as Sissy Spacek and Jessica Chastain in the past). Knight of Cups, the second project, will also star Bale and Blanchett, though the movies reportedly do not relate to each other. That picture would also star Isabel Lucas, another young, relatively unknown actress.

None of the pictures has a U.S. distributor, though FilmNation has been serving as a sales rep and production company. Malick has reportedly already received offers for the first movie, though he has turned them down--an enviable position to be in. Let's hope his first movie squeezes into the end-of-year 2012 releases, but knowing Malick, such an optimistic timeline will be a longshot.