Update!

Shia LaBeouf's Box-Office Streak Goes Poof (While an All-Time Bomb Goes Boom)

Lawless bows at No. 2, behind Labor Day champ The Possession; kiddie movie The Oogieloves has disastrous opening for the record books

By Joal Ryan Sep 03, 2012 4:29 PMTags
Shia LaBouf, Lawless, The Ooogieloves, Big Balloon AdventureThe Weinstein Company, Kenn Viselman Presents

It didn't figure Lawless would be Shia LaBeouf's eighth straight No. 1 box-office hit, and it wasn't.

But Goobie, Zoozie and Toofie are probably jealous anyway. (More on them in a bit.)

LaBeouf's Depression-era crime drama took second in the final weekend of summer with a $10 million Friday-Sunday.

The Exorcist-vibing horror movie The Possession took the top spot with a $17.7 million Friday-Sunday, and an estimated $21.3 million Friday-Monday that was the second-biggest, four-day Labor Day weekend-opening ever. ("[L]ike winning a participation medal at the turtle races," Exhibitor Relations tweeted of the accomplishment.)

And while Labor Day doesn't usually feature gangbuster performances, it hasn't ever witnessed a bomb like The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure

The Teletubbies-vibing children's movie, featuring the aforementioned characters Goobie, Zoozie and Toofie, and appearances by kid favorites Chazz Palminteri and Cloris Leachman, averaged about $200 at each of its 2,160 theaters.

The opening is the worst of any film ever debuting at between 2,000 and 2,500 screens, per BoxOfficeMojo.com stats. Its Friday-Sunday grand sum of $445,089 is the 12th-lowest of all-time for a wide-release debut.  

The unfunny punchline: It reportedly cost $20 million to make, and another $40 million to make it into theaters.

More weekend results:

• Prior to Lawless, LaBeouf, in the midst of a personal "calming down," had starred in seven consecutive No. 1-opening movies, dating back to 2007's Disturbia, and not including the animated film, Surf's Up. (Note: As the comments section correctly notes, Lawless opened at No. 1 on Wednesday, its first day in theaters. But No. 1 streaks, as a rule, are marked in weekends not days. For those keeping score at home, Lawless has taken in an estimated $15.1 million to date.) 

The Avengers returned to wide release, but not to the Top 10. It took in $2.2 million Friday-Monday, upped its domestic haul to $620 million, but, as expected, got nowhere closer really to toppling Titanic for the No. 2 spot among Hollywood's all-time champs. 

The Amazing Spider-Man ($1.4 million Friday-Sunday) played out its string here, but capped off its debut in China with a $14.5 million, box-office-topping weekend. The reboot's worldwide gross is now at $735.2 million.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Premium Rush ($3.9 million Friday-Sunday; $5.1 million Friday-Monday) and Dax Shepard's Hit and Run ($2.6 million Friday-Sunday; $3.2 million Friday-Monday) dropped out of the Top 10 after stays of just one week each.

The Bourne Legacy ($7.3 million Friday-Sunday; $9.4 million Friday-Monday) continued its slow-ish march to $100 million domestically.

2016: Obama's America ($5.1 million Friday-Sunday; $7.1 million Friday-Monday) enjoyed no bounce from the Republican convention. Despite moving up to more than 1,700 theaters, the Tea Party doc dropped two spots in the rankings, from seventh to ninth.

• Things went from bad to worse for the Ashley Greene horror miss The Apparition ($635,000 Friday-Sunday; $765,000 Friday-Monday), which suffered one of the all-time biggest plunges in week-to-week ticket sales. 

Meryl Streep's Hope Springs ($4.7 million Friday-Sunday; $6 million Friday-Monday) quietly broke the $50 million mark domestically.

• Overall, the Labor Day weekend box office was less dead than usual. The holiday period was up a tick from last year's, Exhibitor Relations' numbers noted. The box-office tracking firm, however, was calling for the summer movie season on the whole to be off from 2011's.

Here's a complete look at the holiday weekend's top movies, per updated Friday-Sunday domestic totals and Friday-Monday estimates as reported by the studios and Exhibitor Relations:

  1. The Possession, $17.7 million Friday-Sunday ($21.3 million Friday-Monday)
  2. Lawless, $10 million Friday-Sunday ($13 million Friday-Monday)
  3. The Expendables 2, $8.9 million Friday-Sunday ($11.2 million Friday-Monday)
  4. The Bourne Legacy, $7.3 million Friday-Sunday ($9.4 million Friday-Monday)
  5. ParaNorman, $6.6 million Friday-Sunday ($8.9 million Friday-Monday)
  6. The Odd Life of Timothy Green, $6.3 million ($8.7 million Friday-Monday)
  7. The Dark Knight Rises, $6.1 million Friday-Sunday ($7.9 million Friday-Monday)
  8. The Campaign, $5.7 million Friday-Sunday ($7 million Friday-Monday)
  9. 2016: Obama's America, $5.1 million Friday-Sunday ($7.1 million Friday-Monday)
  10. Hope Springs, $4.7 million Friday-Sunday ($6 million Friday-Monday)

(Originally published at 11:06 a.m. PT on Sept. 2, 2012.)