"War Room" Rises to #1 during Labor Day Weekend Box Office

[JamesG]

Weekend Report - War Room Walks to #1
by Keith Simanton
September 6, 2015


Sony is reporting that War Room, their faith-based film from Affirm Films, dropped a slight 18% in its second week, taking in $9.3M for the three-day domestic box office and the #1 spot on the charts.

As far as the opening films, A Walk in the Woods, with $8.2M, ambled past the sputtering The Transporter Refueled, which made $7.2M.



Neither of those films could move Straight Outta Compton out of the #2 spot, however, as the Universal hit made $8.7M, a slight 34% drop off from last week. The film has a domestic cume of $147.6M.

The last time that a film failed to open at #1, only to rise to do so in a later frame, wasn't that long ago. Inside Out, in its third weekend, took #1 over the Fourth of July holiday, finally moving past Jurassic World (more on it in moment), in its fourth week of release.



The Top 12 films made $65.8M. To do a year-over-year comparison you have to compensate for the unusually late date of this year's Labor Day. Last year, for example, Labor Day started August 29th and ended on the September 1st Monday.

The Top 12 for that frame, which was led by Guardians of the Galaxy and its $17M take, was up 25.4% higher from this year. For the same days, however, this weekend was actually up 21.7% from last year's Sept. 5- 7th when the 2014 back-to-school frame posted the worst weekend in six years, with $51.5M.







In addition to War Room rising to take the top spot one of the biggest surprises has to be the appearance of Pantelion's Un Gallo Con Muchos Huevos (A Rooster with Many Eggs is the clean translation), a Mexican animated comedy which landed, depending on whom you believe, at either the #7 or #8 position on the charts with $3.4M in 395 theaters.

This Lionsgate release, from Huevocartoon, has a solid $8,607 per screen average for the three day. That's much better than Lionsgate's early August opener Shaun the Sheep, which opened with $4M but a $1,741 psa on 2,320 screens.



Un Gallo Con Muchos Huevos, 3D family fare with a smattering of risque humor, is about a hapless rooster who has to save the family farm by competing in a chicken fight.

It is the reported widest release for a Mexican animated film in history and, given this success, may lead a trend for theaters.







Universal is reporting that yesterday (9/5) Jurassic World crossed the $1B threshold at the international box office. It's only the fourth film to ever reach the milestone joining 2009's Avatar ($2.027B) 1997's Titanic, ($1.528B) and this year's Furious 7 ($1.162B).

Furious 7 and Jurassic World are part of Universal's epic 2015. The studio has absolutely torn up box office records for total receipts, passing the previous record and record-holder, Fox's $5.53B a full month ago.

Fox's record was achieved only at the end of 2014 whereas Universal still has three months left in its year to pad its historic lead.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=4102&p=.htm









September 4-6, 2015 Weekend Studio Estimates:


1. War Room $9,350,000 / $24,663,458
2. Straight Outta Compton $8,850,000 / $147,785,705
3. A Walk in the Woods $8,400,000 / $10,459,000
4. Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation $7,150,000 / $180,386,692
5. The Transporter Refueled $7,130,000
6. No Escape $5,445,000 / $18,446,079
7. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. $3,445,000 / $39,374,148
8. Un Gallo con Muchos Huevos $3,400,000
9. Sinister 2 $3,377,000 / $23,717,000
10. Inside Out $3,146,000 / $348,219,280

[Regulus]

I saw The War Room this past Friday, and I HIGHLY RECOMMEND seeing it. I spotted two "Easter Eggs" in this film. In one scene you see a pickup truck with a sign that reads "Dan Austin Motors" which was the name of the fictitious name of the Car Dealership in their first film, Flywheel. The second one occurs during the jump rope tournament. One team has shirts that read "Sherwood Little Eagles" (Sherwood Church in Albany, Georgia is the church that underwrote this movie, their fifth).