Zach Cregger’s horror film "Weapons" reclaimed the top spot at the North American box office over the Labor Day weekend, earning $10.2 million in its fourth weekend and capping a late-summer run driven in part by viral attention.
Universal’s 50th-anniversary rerelease of Steven Spielberg’s "Jaws" finished second, taking in $8.1 million across roughly 3,200 North American theaters. Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore, said the rerelease provided a timely lift for an otherwise soft summer.
Last weekend had briefly interrupted "Weapons"' run when the Netflix-backed "Kpop Demon Hunters" secured the studio streaming service’s first box-office win, underscoring the volatility of late-summer ticket sales. The performance of "Weapons" across multiple weekends reflected sustained audience interest as the summer movie season wound down.
The "Jaws" rerelease also helped nudge seasonal receipts upward. Dergarabedian said, "How appropriate that a movie that’s celebrating its 50 years, an all-time classic, 'Jaws,' should be as relevant today as it was when it opened. It’s so great because we need every dollar to contribute to the bottom line for this summer." His comments accompanied Comscore’s preliminary tallies indicating the summer is likely to finish near $3.7 billion in North American box office revenue, a total that would fall short of last year’s take and well under the typical pre-pandemic summer benchmark of $4 billion.
The late-August and Labor Day frame historically mixes holdovers, rereleases and a few new entrants, and this year’s receipts reflected that pattern. While rereleases and genre hits helped buoy ticket sales, analysts noted the aggregate seasonal total remained below both last year and long-term expectations.
Final domestic tallies for the summer will be posted as studios and tracking firms complete end-of-season reporting, but early figures show the combination of a viral indie horror and a landmark anniversary rerelease gave the closing weekend of the season an added lift.