Image Credit: Scott Garfield
The box office blues continued during this sad September weekend, when four new releases entered theaters, yet none surpassed $13 million.
In fact, September 2012 is proving to be one of the slowest months at the movies in a decade. As of this weekend, ticket sales have amounted to $357.3 million — 21 percent lower than the same point in the month last year, and the lowest September total since 2004, when month-to-date ticket sales equaled $356.3 million. (Keep in mind, 2004 didn’t have the benefit of 3-D ticket prices.) Nothing seems to be engaging audiences in a substantial way.
But that’s not to say the box office was totally dead this weekend.
Tied for first place was Open Road’s Jake Gyllenhaal/Michael Pena crime drama End of Watch, which earned an estimated $13.0 million out of 2,730 theaters, yielding a mild per-theater average of $4,762. The gritty cop film, which has earned strong reviews overall, was independently financed for a reported budget somewhere between $7 million and $15 million (an Open Road spokesperson did not confirm the budget when reached via email), and then acquired by Open Road for $2 million. READ FULL STORY »
