(Bloomberg) -- Hollywood's worst summer in a decade came to a close over a dismal Labor Day weekend, the first in a generation without a big, new movie opening in wide release.
Movies notched estimated sales of $75.5 million in U.S. and Canadian theaters from Friday to Sunday, making it the slowest Labor Day weekend since 1996, said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at researcher ComScore Inc. It caps a summer which drew just $3.8 billion in sales, the first time the season's tally has dipped below the $4 billion mark since 2006, according to Dergarabedian.
The last time Hollywood studios didn't have a big Labor Day release was 1992, and the absence of a new film this weekend put a capstone on what went wrong during the usually prosperous summer season. Studios spread their big budget pictures across the calendar this year, and much of what they did offer from May to September -- new installments of ongoing serials -- disappointed fans.
“Some comedies didn't perform as expected and there were some great movies that didn't resonate here, although they did better internationally,” Dergarabedian said by phone. “All it takes are one or two movies to harm the bottom line in a profound way. ”
The domestic box office is down about 6 percent year to date compared with a year earlier, according to ComScore.
The holdover picture “The Hitman's Bodyguard” from Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. led the box office for a third time, generating $10.3 million, according to ComScore. It was forecast to generate $7.1 million from Friday to Sunday and $9.1 million through the extended holiday weekend, according to analysts at Box Office Mojo.
The biggest film opening this weekend was a re-release of Steven Spielberg's “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” which opened in 901 theaters to celebrate the science fiction film's 40th anniversary, according to ComScore. The film took in $1.8 million for Friday through Sunday.
The weekend also saw the debut of “Tulip Fever,” a period drama from Weinstein Co. featuring Alicia Vikander, and the novel release of the first two episodes of Marvel Entertainment.'s “The Inhumans” on Imax screens. It had been planned as a film but was instead made into a TV show. ABC will premiere the series in the fall.
Among other returning films, Warner Bros.' “Annabelle: Creation” returned to place second with $7.3 million. It had been forecast to generate $5.1 million over three days and $6.7 million over four days, according to Box Office Mojo.
That puts it on track to be one of the few sequels this summer to beat its predecessor, according to Gitesh Pandya at Box Office Guru.
While sales were harmed by the lack of a new opening movie this weekend, Dergarabedian is expecting an improvement in the coming months, kicked off by Warner Bros.' release of “It,” a horror thriller based on the Stephen King novel of the same name.
“The good news is we have ‘It' this week, and then movies such as ‘The Lego Ninjago Movie,' ‘Kingsman: The Golden Circle' and ‘Blade Runner 2049' to come,” he said. “We are going to make up a lot of ground in the next three months.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Anousha Sakoui in Los Angeles at asakoui@bloomberg.net, Sally Bakewell in New York at sbakewell1@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Crayton Harrison at tharrison5@bloomberg.net, Bruce Rule, Mark Drajem
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