Movie theaters across the country served up plenty of popcorn and soda on Saturday as the industry slashed tickets to a mere $3 in a one-day promotion to honor National Cinema Day. Without any new big movies on the Labor Day marquee, there wasn’t much to lose for Hollywood studios. The discount paid off, as more than 8 million consumers went to the movies, the highest-attended day of the year, compared to only 1 million the day before.
Sony’s rerelease of Spider-Man: No Way Home claimed victory. The superhero pic swung to an estimated $6 million for the three days and $7.6 million for the four, according to Sunday estimates.
One bummer: That’s the lowest gross for a No. 1 Labor Day film in years but a great result for a rerelease, and especially for a rerelease of a relatively recent movie.
It remains to be seen whether Spider-Man: No Way Home, which grossed north of $1.9 billion globally following its Dec. 2021 release, a pandemic-era best, is the ultimate Labor Day weekend victor. According to estimates from rival studios, Top Gun: Maverick could prevail.
Paramount’s Sunday estimates show Top Gun 2 earning an estimated $5.5 million for the three days and $7 million for the four days. That’s enough to push the Paramount and Skydance film past the $700 million mark domestically in its 15th weekend in yet another milestone for the Tom Cruise movie, which has grossed more than $1.4 billion at the worldwide box office.
Normal modeling for the full holiday weekend isn’t reliable because of the $3 Saturday, meaning the order of films could change once final weekend numbers are tallied.
The dramatic Labor Day discount capped a mostly promising summer season for exhibitors and Hollywood studios as they emerge from the pandemic. The May-July corridor was a huge boom, led by Top Gun 2 and other tentpoles including Jurassic World Dominion, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, Minions: The Rise of Gru and Thor: Love and Thunder. Midrange and smaller movies worked as well, from Elvis to the indie darling Everything Everywhere All at Once.
August, however, brought a drought of product due to supply chain issues, which explains why the Labor Day weekend was topped by a pair of movies that have been in the marketplace for months.
Another rerelease over the holiday weekend that impressed was Steven Spielberg’s iconic summer pic Jaw, which was offered in 3D or Imax. The pic, playing in 1,246 theaters, earned an estimated $2.3 million for the three-day weekend and $2.7 million for the four.
Jaws was ahead of the new specialty film, Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul. The Focus Features release, playing in 1,882 locations, earned an estimated $1.4 million for the three days and $1.8 million for the four.
Not surprisingly, Saturday will be the biggest day of Labor Day weekend. Family films, led by Warner Bros.’ DC League of Super-Pets, did especially well as parents and kids look for ways to cope with the searing heatwave in the West (that applied to all consumers, actually).
National Cinema Day is the brainchild of the new Cinema Foundation, which is affiliated with the National Association of Theatre Owners and a host of other companies. The $3 promotion was intended to celebrate the rebound at the summer box office, as well as moviegoing in general. NATO hasn’t released an updated average ticket price since 2019, when it was $9.16, but data and analytic firm EntTelligence says it is north of $12.
