Will ‘Don’t Breathe’ Hold Off Newcomers ‘Light Between Oceans’ and ‘Morgan’ at the Box Office?
Don’t look to this Labor Day weekend to push the summer box office into the stratosphere.
Even though titles new and old have an extra day to amass earnings during the upcoming four-day holiday, it’s going to be a pretty low-grossing weekend as predictions around DreamWorks Pictures and Reliance Entertainment’s romantic drama “The Light Between Oceans” and 20th Century Fox’s sci-fi mystery “Morgan” have both coming in under $10 million.
Results shouldn’t put too much of a dent into the season’s overall performance seeing as Labor Day is historically a relatively low-grossing period, with last year’s highest performer, “War Room,” making just $13.4 million over the four days.
Also Read: Surprise! This Summer's Box Office Is Up 3 Percent Over Last Year's
Stage 6 Films and Screen Gems holdover “Don’t Breathe” is poised to top the box office for its second straight weekend, likely to bring in grosses somewhere north of $13 million.
With summer-season grosses neck and neck with last year’s, 2016 still has a shot at finishing higher than 2015, the second biggest summer on record. As of Monday, 2016 was up 2.63 percent year over year when measuring the 115 days following the first Friday in May.
Even when you measure based on May 1 through the equivalent day on the calendar, 2016 is still up slightly, by .88 percent.
Also Read: 5 Reasons Why 'Don't Breathe' Had a Shockingly Massive Debut
“Morgan” is expected to come in under $8 million, with Fox estimates slightly lower at $6 million for the four-day opening total — not bad for a film that was produced for $8 million.
Debuting on roughly 2,000 screens, “Morgan” stars Kate Mara as a corporate consultant on a top-secret mission, tasked with deciding the fate of a potentially dangerous humanoid girl. It marks director Luke Scott’s feature-length debut.
Distributed by Disney’s Touchstone Pictures, “The Light Between Oceans” is expected to open to less than $9 million from roughly 1,500 screens. It was produced for $20 million.
Also Read: 'Don't Breathe' Defies Forecasts With $26.1 Million Debut, More Than Double Expectations
Starring Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander and Rachel Weisz, the film revolves around a lighthouse keeper and his wife living off the coast of Western Australia as they raise a baby they’ve rescued from an adrift rowboat. Based on a novel by M.L. Stedman, the film was directed and written by Derek Cianfrance (“The Place Beyond the Pines,” “Blue Valentine”).
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