Labor Day weekend tends to work out best for holdovers while new releases don’t fare as well because the summer movie season is coming to an end and studios take a bit of a break to make way for some of their more decent releases in the coming weeks. Last week, Crazy Rich Asians had a remarkable second-weekend hold that took the industry by surprise and they should see similar results over the long weekend.
Once weekend actuals were tallied, Crazy Rich Asians only fell a slight 6.4% from its opening weekend. As far as smallest second-weekend drops are concerned, the film ranked eighth and that’s without the benefit of falling over a holiday weekend. Crazy Rich Asians accomplished this feat on a regular weekend in August, which makes the hold even more phenomenal.
Crazy Rich Asians will see a similar hold this weekend and it has the benefit of Monday box office because Labor Day will play like an inflated Sunday. The film really has shown no signs of slowing down and I think the film will set another industry standard for the Labor Day weekend. I’m going to predict a three-day total of $23-25 million and a possible $30 million take after the Labor Day Monday is factored in.
We have two new wide releases jumping into the fray and it’s possible that one of them has a chance of breaking out in a decent way. The film in question is Searching, which saw a strong showing in its limited release launch last week.
Searching stars John Cho and after his 16-year-old daughter goes missing, a desperate father breaks into her laptop to look for clues to find her. The film has received remarkable reviews with a 93% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes as of this writing and even though I couldn’t locate budget data, it’s likely that this one comes at the low-end which makes profitability easy to come by for the film. There are also a lot of industry insiders who think that the success of Crazy Rich Asians could fall upon this film because it stars a Korean-American lead and focuses on a Korean-American family. A recent story gained traction a few days ago when the star of Crazy Rich Asians, Henry Golding, and the film’s director, Jon M. Chu, bought out a screening of Searching in a show of support for the film. It’s possible that goodwill could spread with moviegoers who also want to support this inclusion in the industry.
This is a high-concept film with a premise that can draw in curious moviegoers but also turn them away if the execution doesn’t match up with the critical praise it’s receiving. I think the film will gain traction based on that curiosity, at least on opening weekend, with a gross of $8-10 million but it could surge if word of mouth proves to be significant.
The other new releases is Operation Finale, starring Oscar Isaac and Ben Kingsley. In the film, fifteen years after the end of World War II, a team of top-secret Israeli agents travels to Argentina to track down Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi officer who masterminded the transportation logistics that brought millions of innocent Jews to their deaths in concentration camps. Hoping to sneak him out of the country to stand trial, agent Peter Malkin soon finds himself playing a deadly game of cat and mouse with the notorious war criminal.
Operation Finale actually got an early jump on the weekend with a launch on Wednesday but its opening numbers weren’t available as of this writing. The film has decent but not great reviews with a 63% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and it’s likely to play to an older audience who doesn’t really have any release in the marketplace to rush to. The subject matter makes it a tough one to really expand beyond an audience who is seeking this out but over the six-day launch, I’m predicting about $7-10 million.
Check back on Monday for the full top ten results!
