Weekend Forecast: ‘All Saints,’ ‘Birth of the Dragon,’ & ‘Leap!’

The final weekend of August marks the pre-Labor Day spot on the calendar and, in an already slow box office market, things look to remain very quiet despite three new films opening in moderate-to-wide release on Friday.

PROS:

  • Sony is mirroring the late August release of 2015’s War Room with this weekend’s faith-based drama, All Saints, debuting in an estimated 700 theaters. A grassroots ad campaign is expected to bring out church groups through the holiday next weekend and beyond as the studio plays the long game. The film’s Facebook activity has outpaced that of films like The Case for Christ and The Resurrection of Gavin Stone.
  • BH Tilt’s Birth of the Dragon will hope to court Bruce Lee fans with the studio’s latest targeted release strategy. Social media buzz on Facebook has topped that of Hands of Stone, which similarly debuted in late August last year.
  • TWC’s Leap! gets its North American release this weekend, with its biggest advantage seeming to be the lack of kid-friendly options in the market since July’s Emoji Movie and the soft performance of this month’s Nut Job 2.
  • Meanwhile, summer’s biggest film — Wonder Woman — is reportedly adding 1,000 theaters this weekend (including some IMAX locations) as it looks to mirror the late summer expansion employed by Jurassic World ahead of Labor Day weekend in 2015. Sleeper hit Baby Driver is also adding an estimated 800 locations this weekend, although it may still land outside the top ten.
  • Other films already in limited release — Wind RiverIngrid Goes West, and Good Times are also reportedly expanding this weekend, however, the latter two are excluded from the forecast below. Wind River‘s forecast below is based on an expected location count around 2,000.

CONS:

  • All Saints‘ social media growth has generally left something to be desired, even in comparison to Case for Christ on Twitter and especially War Room on all major platforms.
  • Birth of the Dragon‘s Twitter trends are far behind those of Hands of Stone, although that is partly attributable to the distributor’s more modest marketing outreach.
  • Leap! hasn’t received a major marketing push in the United States, so it’s possible that much of its online presence is driven by the film’s healthy box office run in overseas markets earlier this year.

The Weekend Forecast:

Title Distributor Weekend Domestic Total through Sunday, August 27 % Change
The Hitman’s Bodyguard Lionsgate/Summit $10,300,000 $39,100,000 -52%
Annabelle: Creation Warner Bros. (New Line) $7,340,000 $77,670,000 -53%
Leap! The Weinstein Company $5,000,000 $5,000,000 NEW
Logan Lucky Bleecker Street $4,560,000 $14,680,000 -40%
Dunkirk Warner Bros. $4,300,000 $172,210,000 -35%
Wind River Weinstein Company $4,200,000 $9,310,000 +41%
All Saints Sony / Columbia $3,600,000 $3,600,000 NEW
The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature Open Road Films $3,310,000 $22,970,000 -35%
Spider-Man: Homecoming Sony / Columbia $3,150,000 $318,960,000 -26%
The Emoji Movie Sony / Columbia $3,000,000 $76,550,000 -33%
Wonder Woman Warner Bros. $2,800,000 $407,320,000 +156%
Birth of the Dragon BH Tilt $2,500,000 $2,500,000 NEW

Shawn Robbins and Alex Edghill contributed to this report.