Films suffer worst slump in a decade

The North American box office hit a slump at the weekend, with top earner The Possession taking in less than $10 million and what could be the gloomiest overall haul since the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

With only a couple of new releases to tempt movie fans, horror film The Possession pulled in an estimated $9.5 million (€7.4 million) in the US and Canada.

That is the first time since 2008 that no film took €7.8 million or more at the domestic box office.

Early September is historically sluggish. After blockbuster releases over the summer, Hollywood studios reserve their big films for the November and December holidays.

But revenues for the three-day movie-going weekend were particularly low, with the total gross for all films expected to be €50-€53 million.

If the numbers hold when final figures come in, it could make the weekend the worst since September 21-23 2001 – two weekends after 9/11 – when revenue topped out at €46.6 million.

“It is pretty scary when the top movie comes in at only $9.5 million,” said Paul Dergarabedian, an analyst at Hollywood.com.

“This is one of the worst-grossing weekends of the past 10 years. In summer, single movies had opening weekends bigger than this entire weekend gross.”

However, Dergarabedian said hope was on the way next week with the next instalment of the Resident Evil horror franchise and the re-release of Disney/ Pixar’s 2003 family film Finding Nemo this time in 3D.

This weekend’s lows follow a mixed summer that saw blockbusters like The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers but a number of flops led to a five per cent drop in summer ticket sales in North America compared to summer 2011.

But in the year to date, the domestic box office is up more than three per cent in revenue compared to the same point in 2011 and currently stands at €6 billion, with a two per cent increase in attendance.

Among the few notable spots was the anti-President Barack Obama documentary 2016: Obama’s America. It boosted its cumulative total to more than €20.3 million to become the second-biggest political documentary since liberal filmmaker Michael Moore’s 2004 anti-war indictment, Fahrenheit 9/11.