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Lawless already opened on Wednesday, temporarily taking the number one spot, but just barely beating The Expendables 2. These mid-week openings tend to be heavily weighted towards that first day. We could be looking at a weekend of just $5 million, with about $7 million over five days.

Lastly, we have a bit of box office history in the making. Remember the title The Oogiloves in The BIG Balloon Adventure, for it is a title that will live in infamy. Debuting Wednesday in over 2,100 theaters, it made a grand total of $102,000, for a per theater average of $47, and assuming five screenings a day, about two tickets per showing. I'd suggest it to be a good place for nudists this weekend, except that it's a kid's film and will probably put you on a list somewhere.

So what exactly is an Oogilove? No one's quite sure and we are clearly afraid to find out, but it's a property that's from someone who has something to do with the Teletubbies and Thomas the Tank Engine, and is trying to create a new franchise. This... does not appear to be happening for him, to say the least, and this is throwing well below even the modest sums that toddler movies normally make. The Barney movie, released at perhaps the height of that insipid show's reach, grossed just $2 million in its opening weekend. And still it looks positively Avatarian compared to this. There's a great deal of sense in this – toddlers don't make movie ticket buying decisions, and parents with a sense of self-preservation don't try to score own goals on their sanity by willingly going to these movies. And when it's something they've never even heard of? Well, you get the perfect storm like we've seen here.

With a shockingly large budget of $20 million, and a very random seeming collection of actors (Christopher Lloyd, Toni Braxton, Jamie Pressly, Chazz Palminteri), Oogielove could be a synonym for epic failure by the end of the weekend, perhaps throwing under the immortal Delgo, which managed just $273 per screen in its opening weekend. That would be a weekend total of $589,000 here, which seems wildly optimistic at this point. Could we see the first under $100 per screen wide release? I wouldn't rule it out, but perhaps around $400,000 could be in the cards, boosted by morbidly curious onlookers. In any case, this is something that's sure to live on for all the wrong reasons.

The Expendables 2 could win a third weekend by default if The Possession fails to show up, though it's a cold comfort, as that weekend total should be around $7 million, putting it on pace for about $80 million total, well below the first film's gross. It's pretty clear they're already beyond diminishing returns for adding stars, and while I'm sure Expendables 3 with Seagal and Snipes and such and such will go ahead, I think the enthusiasm bubble has burst here.

Significant returning films are in short supply this weekend, as the large slate of films earning $5 to 10 million last weekend will mostly fall below that barrier this week. The Bourne Legacy is the best of a poor lot, earning about $6 million, with ParaNorman also having a shot at that mark thanks to its family-friendly plot. Meanwhile, we're going to see the exit from relevance for such films as long running as The Dark Knight Rises and as briefly running as Premium Rush. I wish I could tell you things get better next week, but... no. It's going to be a long couple of weeks waiting for Oscar contenders and fall blockbusters to arrive.

Forecast: Weekend of August 31-September 2, 2012
Rank	Film	Number of Sites	Changes in Sites from Last	Estimated Gross ($)
1	The Posession	2,816	New	8.3
2	The Expendables 2	3,334	-21	7.2
3	The Bourne Legacy	3,129	-525	5.8
4	ParaNorman	3,085	-370	5.3
5	Lawless	2,888	New	5.0
6	2016: Obama's America	1,750	+659	4.4
7	The Campaign	2,941	-361	4.3
8	The Dark Knight Rises	2,187	-419	4.2
9	The Odd Life of Timothy Green	2,635	+37	4.2
10	Hope Springs	2,441	+39	3.7

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