Your Complete Weekend Box Office Tracking, Predictions, & Analysis (09.01.16)

	Don’t Breathe	$16 million
	Suicide Squad	$7.8 million
	The Light Between Oceans	$7.6 million
	Kubo and the Two Strings	$7.4 million
	Morgan	$7 million

Before starting, it is worth pointing out that the numbers above reflect the upcoming four-day holiday weekend. And it’s notoriously the slowest of all the holiday weekends. While breakout horror film Don’t Breathe was able to save last weekend from becoming the second weekend of the year in which no film takes in over $20 million, it won’t be able to do that this weekend, even with the extra day of ticket sales. Only a small handful of times in history has a film been able to cross that threshold over Labor Day weekend. Still, Don’t Breathe will at least still be able to keep its number one spot and soar high above the rest of the weekend’s films, even the newcomers The Light Between Oceans and Morgan. Screen Gems’ horror film has already gone long past its budget of $9.9 million as it sits on $33 million domestically and with people far and wide still talking about the film, it’s bound to continue its already impressive track record. It’s neither decreasing nor increasing its theater presence, but the extra day on the weekend should be enough to give it a bit of an extra boost. As has been discussed, the horror genre has done well this year, particularly when it comes to sequels (The Conjuring 2 had a domestic total just over $100 million and The Purge: Election Year’s domestic total was $79 million). What will be truly impressive of Don’t Breathe if, as an original film, it can come close to, or even surpass, those numbers.

Screen Gems

The remainder of the top five will be a neck-and-neck race between the aforementioned new films and holdovers Suicide Squad and Kubo and the Two Strings. The anti-hero Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment film should have no trouble staying in second place, but the rest of the films from the weekend will be hot on its tail. It’s losing about 300 theaters this weekend, but having Monday off should offset that. There’s not much more that can be said about the third film in the DC Extended Universe that hasn’t already been said — fans like it for the most part, critics very much didn’t, it wasn’t a saving grace, etc. Onwards and upwards — who’s ready for Wonder Woman?

	Opening Weekend	Current Gross	Facebook Likes	Tweets
Don’t Breathe	$26.411 million	$33.592 million	11,024	113,995
Suicide Squad	$133.682 million	$286.417 million	104,331	220,436
The Light Between Oceans	N/A	N/A	46,570	2,837
Kubo and the Two Strings	$12.608 million	$27.169 million	6,344	9,237
Morgan	N/A	N/A	23,976	2,956

The first new film of the weekend, Derek Cianfrance’s The Light Between Oceans starring Alicia Vikander, Michael Fassbender, and Rachel Weisz, should be able to beat out the rest. It’s had a strong marketing campaign and as one of the season’s first awards-buzzy picture, there are people out there who will undoubtedly want to see it (if only to check it off on a list before all the award shows start airing). Plus, the cast is well-known and high-caliber and Vikander’s Oscar is still recent enough that are people are eager to see what she continues to do. While Oscar-bait films tend to be downers, sometimes after months upon months of blockbusters of varying degrees, film audiences start itching for something with more of an emotional weight and looking to be swept up in the grandeur of it all. The Light Between Oceans promises that in spades, even if some critics find that it borders on melodrama.

Touchstone Pictures

With Sausage Party safely on the list, Kubo will continue to stubbornly hold on as the final animated film in the top five. Animated films have dominated the box office all summer and while they’ve started to dwindle some as kids head back to school, there are still new ones set to be released in the coming weeks and they should ensure that the top five doesn’t go without an animated film for some time. Kubo hasn’t made as big of an impact as much as previous Laika film, and it’s still only made about half its production budget in ticket sales, but people are still talking about how good it is and what its Oscar chances could be, and that’s never a bad thing. It’s closing by a little less than 300 theaters (while other animated films like Finding Dory and Ice Age: Collision Course are using the holiday weekend to once more increase their theater count as one final bid for more box office intake) and will likely go out quietly.

	Rotten Tomatoes			IMDb		Metacritic
	Critics	Users	# of Ratings	Stars	# of Ratings
Don’t Breathe	87	85	16,409	7.8	8,870	71
Suicide Squad	26	67	116,011	6.8	192,118	40
The Light Between Oceans	62	N/A	63	7.4	99	60
Kubo and the Two Strings	96	88	16,944	8.4	6,391	84
Morgan	42	N/A	55	6.6	77	50

Morgan may be opening in a few hundred more theaters than The Light Between Oceans, but the sci-fi flick starring Kate Mara and The Witch’s Anya Taylor-Joy hasn’t had as big of a marketing impact as the romantic drama. Plus, festival buzz around The Light Between Oceans gives it a better chance of having a stronger performance this weekend. Morgan also isn’t receiving the critical acclaim its creators were likely looking for, but with a budget of about $8 million or so, it also doesn’t need to have a spectacularly large intake to turn a profit. Still, compared to last year, it won’t be the sci-fi critical darling like Ex Machina or the sci-fi box office hero like The Martian (which was also a critical success).

Even with older films from the summer increasing their theater counts for the weekend, they likely won’t be able to break into the top ten. Instead, the remaining five spots will be taken by mainstays Sausage Party, Pete’s Drago, Mechanic: Resurrection, Bad Moms, and Jason Bourne, all taking in somewhere between $4 million and $6.5 million over the four days. Pete’s Dragon has finally surpassed its production budget with a current global box office of $78 million, but it still remains a bit of a disappoint on Disney’s track record this year, despite the great reviews it received. Next week, everyone’s favorite Hollywood actor Tom Hanks stars in the newest Clint Eastwood film Sully and that will certainly have an impact.

(Sources: boxoffice.com, boxofficemojo.com, rottentomatoes.com, imdb.com, metacritic.com. Tweets and Likes represent figures for this week only. Figures represent numbers at time of writing, and may have changed. Tracking Board does not report Rotten Tomatoes user ratings for movies that have not yet seen wide release.)

Anya Crittenton | Associate Editor