Ahna O'Reilly (seated at left), Viola Davis (standing), Bryce Dallas Howard (seated at center) and Emma Stone appear in The Help
Taking no vacations, and no prisoners, the saintly Mississippi maids of The Help cleaned up movie houses again, winning the Labor Day weekend in North American theaters with $14.2 million from Friday to Sunday, according to studio estimates. After finishing second to Rise of the Planet of the Apes its first weekend, The Help has now completed a hat trick, making it the first threepeat at the top of the charts since Inception in July 2010. The movie's drop of only 2% from last weekend promises a strong September and, with cheers from critics and the public still full-throated, a serious run at Oscar time.
Granted, The Help's competition in the last official weekend of the 2011 Hollywood summer ranged from the ignorable to the deplorable. Another four-letter-noun drama, The Debt, parlayed its multigenerational spy story and the incongruent marquee pairing of Oscar doyenne Helen Mirren and Avatar hunk Sam Worthington into a $9.7 million weekend and $11.6 million since its Wednesday opening. Like The Help, it played best to audiences over 30. Younger customers were apparently thinking of the new school year or watching the U.S. Open; they ignored the scare machines Shark Night 3D and Apollo 18. Each cadged a meager $6.7 million. The general apathy was clear in the ratings moviegoers gave to the CinemaScore polling outfit as they left theaters: The Debt pulled a mediocre B, Shark Night a C and Apollo a near-record-low D. Such is the junkyard of the movie business at summer's end.
Here are the Monday estimates of the four-day holiday weekend's top-grossing pictures in North American theaters, as reported by Box Office Mojo:
1. The Help, $19 million; $123.4 million, fourth week
2. The Debt, $12.6 million; $14.6 million, first six days
3. Apollo 18, $10.7 million, first weekend
4. Shark Night 3D, $10.3 million, first weekend
5. Rise of the Planet of the Apes, $10.25 million; $162.5 million, fifth week
6. Columbiana, $9.4 million; $24 million, second week
7. Our Idiot Brother, $7 million; $17.3 million, second week
8. Spy Kids: All the Time in the World, $6.6 million; $31 million, third week
9. Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, $6.1 million; $17.6 million, second week
10. The Smurfs, $5.6 million; $133.7 million, sixth week