In late summer slump, 'Expendables 2' leads with $13 million

This week was bad for new wide releases. The three new releases finished seventh, tenth, and twelfth. Those are dismal debuts across the board.

Many expected Premium Rush would have a chance at beating The Expendables 2, but instead the action hero picture topped the box office with a $13.5 million weekend, a 52% drop
from opening, on par with the percentage drop of the original. In seventh, Premium Rush earned just $6.3 million. I guess bike chases just don't have the same allure as mechanical smash-ups. Along with Lance Armstrong's decision to not fight against allegations of doping anymore, it was a bad weekend for bike enthusiasts.

Cracking tenth place, Hit & Run's $4.6 million made it a huge hit for indie standards, but some had predicted the well-reviewed picture could have soared even higher. Still, this low-budget movie is already in the green and because it stars TV favorites Dax
Shepard and Kristen Bell, it should do well in the home entertainment environment.

In twelfth, horror offering The Apparition reeled in $2.9 million. With a wisely limited release of 800 theatre, the per-screen average of $3,600 was actually higher than all but two of the movies that placed above it. That means distribution costs weren't too high and people had the benefit of seeing the movie in a packed theatre, where screams can be contagious.

The surprise hit of the weekend was the conservative documentary 2016: Obama's America, which expanded on the eve of the Republican National Convention. Many estimated the movie would earn in the $2-3 million range, on par with other right-leaning docs, but instead it pulled in $6.2 million with a strong per-screen average of $5,700. The weekend tripled its total gross to date, which stands at $9 million. That makes it the highest-grossing conservative doc ever. Ads on talk radio helped support the political picture, which also benefits from heightened interest thanks to the upcoming election.

New Specialty releases fared much better than wide ones. Sleepwalk with Me, which had Ira Glass and the "This American Life" audience in its corner, debuted to $65,000 per-screen. Glass hosted a midnight screening of the movie in Manhattan this weekend, which was one reason the movie earned the title of "best per-screen average opening ever from a first-time filmmaker." Mike Birbiglia writes, directs, and stars in the autobiographical work, which will expand into twenty markets next week.

Samsara, a meditative travelogue, opened to $75,000 on two screens. Our filmmaker profile
reveals just how much work went into the non-fiction picture, which visits 100 locations in 25 countries on five continents. That sounds well-worth the price of admission.

This Friday may kick off a three-day weekend, but it's one of the few holiday periods where Hollywood suffers. With many people trying to get one last weekend outdoors in, the time period is a dead zone. On Wednesday, the violent Prohibition-set picture Lawless will get a head start on the weekend. On Friday, The Possession will open wide and try to pull in horror fiends.

'Expendables 2' powers down with $28 million opening

The original Expendables was something of a sequel itself, trading on the star power of aging action heroes thrust into a situation that demanded their expertise with knives/guns/martial arts. The appeal of seeing these stars again, however, appears to have waned. The Expendables 2 opened to $28.7 million, down from the 2010 film's $34.8 million debut. Overall, audiences liked the second movie better than the first, giving the second an "A-" rating to the first one's "B+." But is it possible that the sequel only drew the most die-hard genre lovers, who were already eager to give the movie a satisfactory rating? As the summer draws to a close, it's unlikely the sequel will top $100 million, something the first film achieved, but just barely.

Stop-motion animation offering ParaNorman opened to $14 million. That's lower than animation studio LAIKA's previous film, Coraline, which posted an $18 million opening. However, the 3D picture performed better than British import Pirates!, which debuted to $11 million earlier this summer. Unless you're Disney/DreamWorks Animation/Illumination, it appears that the animated field is tough. Focus continued its role as a distributor with this movie, which at over three thousand screens is its widest release to date.

The Odd Life of Timothy Green had a middling weekend of $10.9 million. Those that attended gave the sentimental story an "A-" rating, and its Wednesday debut gave it a five-day total of $15.1 million--not so bad. There are plenty of sentimental stories that catch fire at the box office (think: Marley & Me, The Pursuit of Happyness) but those ones had bigger stars attached. Given that Jennifer Garner and Joel Edgerton led this picture, the results aren't so bad, although the $25 million budget will certainly take some time to be recouped.

Starring Jordin Sparks and the late Whitney Houston, Sparkle sang for $12 million. Audiences were pleased with the musical remake, giving it an "A" rating. Unlike Timothy Green, this movie only cost $14 million to make, so it will earn back its budget in no time.

Hope Springs, which earned $9.1 million and eighth place this week, needs to drop minimally in order to be deemed a success. Its 37.9% fall from opening weekend was the lowest of any movie in the top ten, and slightly better than the dip in star Meryl Streep's 2009 film Julie & Julia. That movie leveled its fall to the 20% range by the third week, something Hope Springs will need to do if it wants a "sleeper semi-hit" status.

Perhaps it was the Twilight fans, but Cosmopolis averaged $24,000 per screen at three locations. Will more Twihards turn out to see Robert Pattinson in coming weeks, even if he's not a vampire? My guess is no, though a strong performance in this movie should help Pattinson's career once the vampire franchise is finished.

On Wednesday, real-life couple Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell star in Hit & Run. On Friday, bikes replace cars in the high-speed action movie Premium Rush, which opens opposite the spooky offering The Apparition.