Angel Has Fallen picked a good weekend to open up last week. The more quiet frame allowed it to take the top spot with a solid $21.3 million opening and it should still see box office supremacy over Labor Day weekend thanks to a lack of competition. This is essentially the calm before the It: Chapter Two storm next weekend so Labor Day has to settle for a very mellow time at the movies.
The Labor Day frame isn’t really exactly known for big business. The record holder for biggest Labor Day opening weekend is still, surprisingly, Rob Zombie’s Halloween remake which opened to $30.6 million over the holiday weekend back in 2007. The three day total came in at $26.3 million, still a record for the holiday which was almost broken by the fourth weekend of Crazy Rich Asians last year ($21.9 million over three days, $28.5 million over the full holiday). Needless to say, it’s not really a big box office weekend and usually allows summer holdovers to stay afloat a bit longer.
Angel Has Fallen only has competition from one real wide release and that’s the Blumhouse Tilt thriller, Don’t Let Go. The film, starring David Oyelowo, finds him attempting to retroactively prevent the death of loved ones. The film premiered eight months ago at the Sundance Film Festival to a mixed reaction and that hasn’t changed much since then. As of this writing, Don’t Let Go is 52% rotten on Rotten Tomatoes and this, along with a lack of buzz, makes me think Don’t Let Go will be a rare Blumhouse miss. I’m predicting about $4.5 million for the film and it’s likely going to finish outside of the top five this weekend.
Angel Has Fallen should see about $16 million over the full holiday as it once again justifies Lionsgate release strategy with films like these. A good example of Lionsgate reputation with this 2017’s The Hitman’s Bodyguard which also opened to $21.3 million over the weekend of August 18 and actually stayed number one over three very slow weekends in August. Angel Has Fallen won’t see a third weekend at number one thanks to Pennywise but the studio should be happy with the results.
