Here’s your estimated 4-day box office returns (new releases bolded):

1. War Room – $12.5 million ($27.8 million total)

2. Straight Outta Compton – $11.2 million ($150.2 million total)

3. A Walk in the Woods – $10.5 million ($12.6 million total)

4. Mission Impossible Rogue Nation – $9.3 million ($182.5 million total)

5. The Transporter Refueled – $9.0 million ($9.0 million total)

6. No Escape – $7.0 million ($20.0 million total)

7. Inside Out – $4.5 million ($349.6 million total)

8. The Man From U.N.C.L.E. – $4.44 million ($40.3 million total)

9. Un Gallo con Muchos Huevos – $4.42 million ($4.42 million total)

10. Sinister 2 – $4.2 million ($24.5 million total)

The Big Stories

The unofficial end of summer is here at the box office. There have been winners and a few big losers. But it’s been fun hasn’t it? There were 45 wide releases from May to Labor Day but just 19 of them received positive ratings at Rotten Tomatoes from critics and, more importantly to the studios, only 11 of them can undoubtedly boast themselves as successful as of this weekend (Jurassic World, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Minions, Inside Out, San Andreas, Pitch Perfect 2, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Insidious Chapter 3, Spy, Magic Mike XXL and Ant-Man). Two or three more may still break into the black (believe it or not, Terminator Genisys is nearly there thanks to it rallying in China) and the summer box office looks to, surprisingly, be one of the top grossing to date, but it is of little consolation to those who spent so much to get back so little.

Refueled On Empty

The Transporter Refueled may have seemed like the big opener of the weekend, but how could it have been. A Jason Statham headliner without the benefit of the Expendables, some furious fast stuff or Melissa McCarthy hasn’t opened to more than $10 million since 2011’s The Mechanic. January of 2011. And this fourth entry did not even have Statham in it. The last Transporter film back in 2008 opened to $12 million and that was down from the $16.5 start of the second one three years earlier. Not one film in the series made three times its opening weekend and only the third film made over $100 million worldwide. Though with a $65 million overhead (the first wide release distributed by EuropaCorp) it hardly justified a fourth go-round. Finishing just 26th on the all-time Labor Day opening weekend chart, you can expect a huge dropoff on another lackluster weekend next week as the film struggles to make $25 million total for the lowest-grossing film in the series.

It’s Turning Broad Green

Speaking of a company’s first wide release, Broad Green Pictures said to heck with platforming its Robert Redford/Nick Nolte Sundance pickup, A Walk in the Woods, and just put it out there in 1,960 theaters. The result? The 18th best Labor Day opening. Combine that with opening it on Wednesday (where it was actually #1 for a day) and it looks like they have a nice end-of-summer/early Fall release on their hands. Critics may not have been too fond of the Ken Kwapis film (47% at Rotten Tomatoes) but this appears to be a title that will catch on with adults. It only needs another $4 million to supplant Dope (which was re-released by Open Road this weekend) as the highest-grossing Sundance film of the year to date after Fox Searchlight could just not find the younger audience for Me and Earl and the Dying Girl ($6.7 million to date.)

Broad Green has three more releases on the slate for 2015 and are likely to see small releases for Sarah Silverman in I Smile Back and Fear the Walking Dead‘s Cliff Curtis in The Dark Horse. But it would be cool to see if they go a bit wider with Ramin Bahrani’s 99 Homes with Andrew Garfield and Michael Shannon (in a performance that deserves to be remembered come awards time) and see if they can bring in the same audience. It may not have the goofy sentiment of A Walk in the Woods but it would be nice to see Broad Green go after an adult audience where others have failed in the past.

Tales of the Top Ten

Last week I said the #1 slot would be close this week between Straight Outta Compton and War Room, if the latter expanded its release. Well Tri-Star did just that, adding 391 theaters for a total of 1526. And succeeded. With nearly $28 million in the bank, War Room is climbing the faith-based chart and should be heard from throughout all of September. Universal’s NWA biopic missed the opportunity to give Universal its second four-week victory of 2015 after Furious 7 dominated the month of April. The last film to have a four-peat was The Hunger Games back in March/April 2012. The last Universal films before this year to do it were 2000’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Meet the Parents. Before that, 1995’s Apollo 13.

With $182 million in the bank now, where does Mission Impossible Rogue Nation stand amongst its predecessors? It has finally outgrossed the 1996 original. It is still $15 million off the pace of both the fourth and second entries. Paramount will do whatever it can to make it reach $200 million here in the U.S. It might, just might, have one more week in the top five, then the release schedule starts to get loaded so it may find itself pushed out of the top ten by the last weekend on September. Maybe. Ant-Man, meanwhile, is going to officially outgross Captain America: The First Avenger in the U.S. sometime this week. It has already surpassed it worldwide.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. may make a push for $50 million here in the States, but without a healthy overseas infusion it is currently one of the biggest bombs of the summer ahead of just Tomorrowland and Fantastic Four. Both No Escape and Sinister 2 are marching towards the atypical late summer gross of $30 million each. But jumping back into the top ten is Pixar’s Inside Out which was re-released on an additional 2200 screens this weekend. The highest-grossing animated film of the year in the U.S. (it’s still $300 million behind Minions worldwide) and the highest-grossing original film in Pixar’s history is going to soon pass $350 million where it will reside as the 5th highest-grossing animated film ever in the U.S. behind Shrek 2, Toy Story 3, Frozen and Despicable Me 2. The Lion King and Finding Nemo increased their loads thanks to re-releases in 3-D.

Not to be outdone though, Pantelion’s Mexican animated film, Un Gallo con Muchos Huevos (aka A Rooster with Many Eggs) grossed $4.4 million over the holiday weekend on just 395 screens. That is more than Zac Efron’s We Are Your Friends has grossed in 11 days; the lowest-performing release on over 2,000 screens since 2012’s Oogieloves In The BIG Balloon Adventure.

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Erik Childress can be heard each week on the WGN Radio Podcast evaluating box office with Nick Digilio.

[box office figures via Box Office Mojo]

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