Weekend Box Office: Pretty Much Everything Bombs

This particular weekend is consistently one of the worst of the year, most likely due to the return of school, the return of football, and general moviegoing fatigue after the summer blockbuster bonanza (not like that was particularly great this year). But this weekend was the worst of the worst, posting the lowest numbers since this same weekend in 2008.

It's not as though there were a lot of big new movies coming out to boost the box office: "The Words" was pretty much the only major opener of the weekend, and it placed third with an estimated $4.9 million. In front of it were "The Possession" in first place with $9.8 million and "Lawless" with $5.8 million, potentially making this the first weekend since 2008 that no movie broke $10 million. Barring a big Sunday for "The Possession," that should hold true by Monday.

On the positive side, those were relatively small drops for "Possession" and "Lawless" from their first weekends, each about 40-45%. The cumulative total for "Possession" is decent at $33.7 million, but "Lawless" is having a bad run with just $23.4M over two weekends.

Fourth place went to "The Expendables 2," which drew in about $4.8 million in its fourth week for a total of $75.5M. That was followed by "ParaNorman" in fifth place, which is holding on with $4.3M over the weekend for a total of $45.5M.

The only other new opener to place in the top 10 this weekend was "Cold Light of Day," which earned $1.9 million in a relatively small run of about 1,500 theaters.

One more notable number: "2016: Obama's America," the anti-Obama political documentary, just passed $26.3 million to make it the second-biggest political documentary of all time. However, Michael Moore's "Farenheit 9/11" retains the top spot with more than $100 million, so "Obama's America" is unlikely to catch up.

1. "The Possession" - $9.8 million ($33.7M)
2. "Lawless" - $5.8 million ($23.4M)
3. "The Words" - $4.9 million
4. "The Expendables 2" - $4.8 million ($75.5M)
5. "ParaNorman" - $4.3 million ($45.5M)