While at first, it looked like One Direction: This Is Us may eke out a box office victory over the four-day Labor Day weekend, Lee Daniels’ The Butler pulled off the upset. One Direction’s fans just weren’t enough to keep that film’s momentum going for four straight days.
As we reported earlier this morning, early numbers from Hollywood showed that This Is Us grossed $17 million in its first three days. That was just enough to put it ahead of The Butler at that time. However, the fact that there was a huge dropoff between Friday and Saturday was a clear sign that One Direction was losing steam.
According to the LA Times, This Is Us only ended up with $18 million after four days, falling behind The Butler’s $20 million four-day weekend. The Weinstein Company film, which cost just $30 million to make, has already made $79.3 million since it was released.
This Is Us did fail to meet expectations and both Getaway and Closed Circuit flopped. However, this past Labor Day weekend reached a record $157 million total, topping the $148 million record set in 2007.
Total box office revenue over the summer hit $4.71 billion, beating the 2011 record and attendance grew by 6.6 percent. That’s incredible, considering the number of high profile flops this summer.
“This has been a huge summer,” Paul Dergarabedian, president of Hollywood.com-Box Office, told Businessweek. “It’s amazing, especially after coming off so many big-budget tentpole flops.”
image: Sony