One Direction mounted a late-summer assault on movie theaters with its concert flick One Direction: This Is Us. The British/Irish boy band toppled the very American story of The Butler to reign—at least for a weekend—supreme. The concert film collected an estimated $15.8 million to The Butler’s $14.9 mil to win the traditional Friday-through-Sunday frame.
But if you lump Monday’s Labor Day holiday in with the pot, a certain White House laborer turns the proverbial table (most likely one located in the State Dining Room) on the lads from London. The Butler earns an estimated $20 million to One Direction’s $18 million.
For a solid month, the R-rated We’re the Millers has loitered near the top of the box office, and it did so again this week, sweeping $12.7 million from moviegoers to finish third during the traditional weekend. No surprise there.
No, the box office held its biggest surprise for its fourth-place finisher—a movie so surprising that we don’t even have a review of it yet (but we will by this Friday). Instructions Not Included, a Spanish-language film playing in just 347 theaters (for comparison’s sake, about a tenth of the theaters playing We’re the Millers) earned $7.8 million. That’s way better than any of the other new releases not featuring a British boy band: Getaway, Selena Gomez’ car-based, um, vehicle, earned just $4.5 million for a ninth-place finish, and Closed Circuit earned just $2.5 million in a smaller release.
Planes, Disney’s forgettable but surprisingly durable CGI cartoon, was the beneficiary of these newcomers’ lackluster performances. It finished with $7.7 million—just a hair behind Instructions—for fifth place.
Final figures update: 1. One Direction: This is Us, $15.8 million; 2. The Butler, $14.9 million; 3. We’re the Millers, $12.7 million; 4. Instructions Not Included, $7.8 million; 5. Planes, $7.7 million.
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