Box Office: The Invitation leads slowest weekend of the summer

Box Office Mojo has just posted the Friday box office numbers and folks, it ain’t pretty. The PG13 horror film The Invitation is leading the box office this weekend with a lower than expected take between $6-7 Million. I predicted this would open under $10 Million but didn’t expect it to go as low as it is. Given the genre and rating, a $10 million plus opening would have been a decent number for a movie that will likely find most of its audience on streaming, but in the end this one is early making a peep theatrically.

That said, it’s still doing much better than any other new release this weekend. Even with a modest prediction of $4.5 Million, George Miller’s 3000 Years of Longing is coming in even lower with a projected $2.9 Million. Critical reception didn’t paint it as a rush to the theaters kind of film and audiences seem to agree.

According to Deadline‘s estimates, the weekend box office is expected to gross just $54 Million in total, marking the lowest weekend since January, and easily the worst of the summer. However, it’s worth noting that the last weekend before Labor Day is usually seen as a burn-off weekend. Things don’t look much rosier for Labor Day weekend. Last year, in a unique piece of programming, we got Marvel’s Shang-Chi, which had a mega-opening, but this year we have a re-release of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, as well as an extended cut of Spider-Man: No Way Home. It’ll be interesting to see how both do.

The big miss this weekend is Amazon’s decision not to release the Sylvester Stallone film Samaritan theatrically. Stallone’s star power alone could have easily propelled the super hero film to number one.

Don’t forget to check back with us on Sunday when we give a full run down of this weekend’s abysmal box office numbers.