Weekend Box-Office: September 7-9, 2012

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

The box office: Repossessed!

Wow, when the summer movie season officially ended, it really snuffed out the embers of box office — this was one of the worst weekends in years for the movie business. Theaters were like a police barricade at a crime scene: nothing to see here, please move along.

Last weekend’s winner took the top honor (such as it is) for a second week as the supernatural thriller THE POSSESSION put the frighteners on audiences again with a mere $9.5 million. The Sam Raimi-produced spooker has a $33.3 million total so far, already making back twice its modest production budget (Raimi’s own recent horror directing effort DRAG ME TO HELL ended up with $42.1 million).

Behind those Dybbuk Box chills was another holdover, the bootlegger crime story LAWLESS with $6 million. At a $23.5 million total, it’s the biggest film so far from director John Hillcoat, although THE ROAD and THE PROPOSITION were limited releases (LAWLESS is in more than 3000 theaters). Have to wonder if it would be doing better if star Tom Hardy’s face wasn’t obscured during his appearance in the second-biggest movie of 2012…

In third place was the weekend’s only new wide release, the Bradley Cooper drama THE WORDS. Being the Sexiest Man Alive doesn’t necessarily translate to box office bucks, and the movie opened with just $5 million (although the budget was reportedly only $6 million, so it’s not too bad if you look at it that way).

After that was a close and not terribly interesting race, with THE EXPENDABLES 2 creaking along as THE BOURNE LEGACY passes $100 million and the remainder of the chart, from PARANORMAN on down, settles in the threes.

At $437.8M so far, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES has now battled to #8 on the all-time domestic chart. And while that’s still miles away from THE DARK KNIGHT’s $533.3M domestic haul (it’s at #4), RISES has passed its worldwide total just as it also swoops past STAR WARS: EPISODE I – THE PHANTOM MENACE to take the #10 spot among all-time global moneymakers.

Meanwhile, the $26 million total for 2016 OBAMA’S AMERICA makes it the second-biggest politcal documentary behind Michael Moore’s FAHRENHEIT 9/11 (with $119.1M). Outside the chart, the Henry “New Superman” Cavill thriller THE COLD LIGHT OF DAY stiffed with $1.8M, the limited-release comedy BACHELORETTE had a higher per-screen average than anything in the Top 10, and the IMAX release of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (on Blu-Ray later this month) brought in $1.7 million on 267 gigantic screens.

Next weekend has Milla Jovovich battling zombies and corporate villainy for her fifth time in RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION, while fish get extradimensionalized for the Pixar reissue FINDING NEMO 3D and limited releases include Paul Thomas Anderson’s ancitipated THE MASTER, the Richard Gere drama ARBITRAGE, and Nic Cage’s latest (surprisingly not direct-to-video) actioner STOLEN.

What’s your favorite film by THE MASTER director Paul Thomas Anderson? VOTE HERE!