Weekend Box Office: ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ Closes Summer With Crazy $28M

Warner Bros.’ Crazy Rich Asians dominated the Labor Day box-office picnic, earning an estimated $28 million to boast the best gross for the long holiday weekend in more than a decade and the third-best of all time, not adjusted for inflation.

To boot, the Jon M. Chu-directed rom-com danced past the $100 million mark in its third weekend, finishing Monday with $117 million. It also eclipsed Girls Trip ($115.2 million) to become the top comedy in two years at the North American box office.

In terms of Labor Day stats, Halloween (2007) remains the record holder with $30.6 million, while The Sixth Sense (1999) is No. 2 with $29.3 million, not adjusted for inflation. Revenue this year was up nearly 30 percent over 2017.

The summer box office made a spectacular year-over-year recovery. While final numbers won’t be tallied until Tuesday, comScore is predicting an uptick of 14.4 percent, the best summer-over-summer increase in at least 20 years. Domestic revenue for the May 1-Sept. 3 corridor is an estimated $4.394 billion, the fifth-best of all time. And it almost would be a record summer if including the first weekend of Avengers: Infinity War, which unfurled April 27. (Summer 2013 remains the record holder with $4.731 billion).

Crazy Rich Asians‘ three-day gross of $22.1 represented a scant 11 percent drop from last weekend. Overseas, the rom-com opened to a stellar $5.4 million in Australia for an early foreign tally of $19.9 million and $136.9 million globally.

Warners also took the No. 2 spot with The Meg, now in its fourth weekend. The hit shark pic earned another $10.5 million for the three days and $13.4 million for the four, pushing its domestic total to $123.4 million. Overseas, it swam to another $17.7 million for a foreign total of $342.3 million and $465.7 million worldwide.

Paramount and Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible — Fallout, which also contributed to a strong August, won the weekend overseas with $89.1 million — including $77.3 million from China, where it posted a franchise-best Friday-Sunday debut. The sixth installment also stayed high up on the domestic chart, landing at No. 3 for a worldwide total of nearly $650 million. Fallout is widely expected to finish its run with more than $700 million globally, a franchise-best, not adjusted for inflation.

A pair of Disney titles are also making news. Pixar’s Incredibles 2 became the first animated pic in history to cross the $600 million mark in North America, not adjusted for inflation, for a worldwide tally of $1.164 billion. And Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp approached the $600 million worldwide — the first Ant-Man topped out at $519.3 million — after opening its final foreign market, Japan, for a global total of $594.9 million.

Among new Labor Day offerings, MGM’s Nazi war-criminal drama Operation Finale fared the best, earning $6 million for the three days and $7.8 million for the four. Playing in 1,818 theaters, the film posted a pleasing six-day debut of $9.5 million after opening Wednesday.

Operation Finale stars Oscar Isaac as a Mossad agent who tracks down Adolf Eichmann (Ben Kingsley), one of the infamous architects of the Holocaust. Chris Weitz (About a Boy) directed. The film, fueled by older moviegoers, performed best in cities on the East and West coasts, with 11 of the top 15 theaters in New York and Los Angeles. Nearly 50 percent of the audience was over the age of 45.

The new thriller Searching, about a Korean-American family living in the San Francisco Bay Area, expanded nationwide into 1,207 theaters after opening in select cinemas last weekend to strong numbers.

Buoyed by support from Chu and other Crazy Rich Asian stars, including Henry Golding — as well as Asian-American groups — the pic came in ahead of expectations with $5 million for the three days and $7.7 million for the four days from 1,207 theaters (heading into the weekend, Sony predicted $3 million).

Searching, written and helmed by Asian-American filmmaker Aneesh Chaganty in his feature directorial debut, tells the story of a 16-year-old girl who goes missing and her father’s effort to find her. John Cho, Michelle La, Debra Messing, Sara Sohn, Joseph Lee and Ric Sarabia star.

Lionsgate’s sci-fi action pic Kin, which includes James Franco in its ensemble cast, wasn’t so lucky, earning just $3 million for the three days and an estimated $3.7 million for the long weekend from 2,141 theaters. Franco stars opposite Jack Reynor, Myles Truitt, Zoe Kravitz, Dennis Quaid and Carrie Coon.

Directed by Jonathan and Josh Baker, Kin is about a young boy and his newly paroled adopted brother who find a strange weapon and are pursued by a vengeful gang of otherworldly soldiers.

Opening in far fewer theaters was Lionsgate/Pantelion Films’ Spanish-language film Ya Veremos, which is the year’s top-grossing movie in Mexico to date. The dramedy earned an estimated $1.8 million for the three days, putting its four-day opening at $2.3 million.

Ya Veremos received an A CinemaScore, followed by an A- for Operation Finale and a B+ for Kin.

Sept. 2, 8:40 a.m. Updated with foreign grosses.
Sept. 3, 7:45 a.m. Updated with revised weekend estimates.