Highest-Grossing Labor Day Weekend Movie Releases Of All Time

Certain holidays have become the go-to destinations for Hollywood to launch its biggest movies. Thanksgiving, for example, has morphed into the de facto domicile for animated Disney projects, while Christmas is a guaranteed hotspot for both award season fare and big-budget "Star Wars" projects. The fact that people are off for these big holidays, not to mention that these events usually involve large groups of people gathering and in need of something to do, is a critical reason these holidays have become such perfect spots to drop high-profile titles. But that doesn't mean every single festive occasion is seen by Hollywood as a means of printing money. Case in point, Labor Day weekend.

Coming at the tail end of the summer and, more importantly, not seen by the general public as an opportunity for lavish parties or massive family gatherings, Labor Day has often been a quiet time of the year, with Hollywood post-2012 frequently failing to offer anything new of note over the weekend. But that doesn't mean the holiday has been entirely devoid of hits. Several lucrative films across a variety of genres have found success here, proving that Labor Day weekend, while not the next Thanksgiving, is just as capable as any other spot on the calendar to launch a hit.

It isn't just horror titles that are staples of Labor Day weekend. Also regularly appearing are adult dramas that open the Wednesday before the weekend to build up word-of-mouth for the holiday frame. Modern examples of this trend include "Operation Finale," "The Debt," and "Closed Circuit," but an early and successful instance of this release strategy was "The Constant Gardener." Launching in North America on Wednesday, August 30, 2005, "The Constant Gardener" would go on to open to $8.5 million from just 1,346 locations over its first three-day weekend.

"The Constant Gardener" was buoyed by a critical element for any 21^st-century adult drama: strong reviews. Buzzy word-of-mouth is extraordinarily helpful but it also doesn't hurt that "Gardener" stood out as a welcome alternative in the marketplace when it opened. Looking at the top 10 biggest movies over its opening weekend, it's apparent that the heady storyline in "The Constant Gardener" serve as a fine contrast to the likes of "The Brothers Grimm" or "Underclassmen." For those looking for cinema that was more contemplative, "The Constant Gardener" was the only game in town and it rode that lack of competition to a $33.5 million domestic total. In the process, "The Constant Gardener" established a release mode that adult dramas are still adhering to today.

Audiences were not pleased with "The American." This movie's marketing promised an action-packed shoot-em-up for grown-ups with George Clooney in the lead role. What audiences got was something much slower and methodical, not a film laden with explosions. As a result, "The American" scored an atrocious D- CinemaScore from opening night crowds. This kind of word-of-mouth explains why "The American" dropped more than 52% from weekend to weekend for the first six weeks of its North American run.

Despite proving to be toxically disliked among the general public, "The American" fared fine financially, grossing $35.6 million in North America. This run kicked off with a Labor Day debut that topped all other titles in the marketplace and led the entire domestic box office to better than usual business for early September. While its lifetime gross was not a record-shattering sum, "The American" did come in ahead of the domestic totals for other Clooney vehicles such as "Intolerable Cruelty" or "Leatherheads," both of which paired up this movie star with other big-name performers. Sold on just Clooney's name and the promise of action while being released over the last weekend of summer 2010, "The American" did well enough to suggest how alluring Clooney could be even when a movie was sold just on his face — before that word-of-mouth kicked in.

As the first box office figures trickled in for "Lawless," which launched on the Wednesday before Labor Day 2012, The Hollywood Reporter noted that The Weinstein Company was debuting "Lawless" over this specific holiday weekend to allow for good word-of-mouth to spread around. A holiday weekend launch may have helped circulate word-of-mouth but what really should have aided "Lawless" was star power. The movie was headlined by Tom Hardy, who portrayed Bane in the $1+ billion grossing worldwide smash "The Dark Knight Rises" just a month before "Lawless" dropped in theaters. With Hardy's value as an actor suddenly and dramatically increased, "Lawless" should have been able to catch people's eyes much easier. The presence of "Transformers" leading man Shia LaBeouf and then-recent Oscar nominee Jessica Chastain further ensured that "Lawless" had plenty of notable names to attract people. Plus crime stories have always had an allure for moviegoers, especially when they debut in a relatively competition-free timeframe like Labor Day weekend.

This strategy seems to have worked to some degree, as "Lawless" managed to crack $37.3 million domestically. At the time of its release, that was enough to put "Lawless" ahead of all but seven other movies released by The Weinstein Company in its seven years of existence. Still, even though it was made on a $26 million budget, "Lawless" wasn't profitable.

Kenneth Branagh's 1992 thriller "Dead Again" expanded into wide release over Labor Day weekend 1991. The resulting box office for the film made it his highest-grossing feature domestically until "Thor" arrived on the scene in May 2011. Even better, the success of "Dead Again" wasn't just limited to one holiday weekend. After grossing $6.3 million in its initial three-day debut, it went on to amass $38.1 million domestically, making this a profitable venture on just a $15 million budget. An early major lead film role for Branagh's then-wife Emma Thompson, "Dead Again" would remain one of her highest-grossing films in North America well into the 21st century.

"Dead Again" was an early sign of the kind of movies that usually find the most success on this holiday weekend; adult-skewing features with either thriller or horror elements. Those sorts of films stand out after a summer movie season packed with kid-friendly options and explosion-packed blockbusters. Positive reviews and a star-studded cast packed with prestigious names also helped to ensure that "Dead Again" rose above being just another schlocky thriller dropped over Labor Day weekend like modern-day titles such as "Shark Night 3D." Though it may have had the word dead in its title, "Dead Again" had a lively box office run that proved how viable opening over the Labor Day frame can be.

While the original "Transporter" was given an October 2002 release date, its sequel, "The Transporter 2," shifted things to the Labor Day frame in 2005. Release dates weren't the only thing getting tweaked in between these two action movies. Jason Statham's cache as an actor had also increased thanks to his supporting presence in the hit 2003 movie "The Italian Job." Statham had expanded his fan base and that meant "The Transporter 2" was also capable of appealing to an even greater array of moviegoers. Thus, it was unsurprising that "The Transporter 2" managed to improve notably on the $25.2 million domestic haul of the first "Transporter" movie by grossing $43 million. At the time, this made "The Transporter 2" the highest-grossing Statham star vehicle. Though the actor would go on to improve his box office appeal even more in the years to come, the Labor Day hit "The Transporter 2" moved him further down that lucrative road.

Michael Myers was back. That was the crux of the marketing campaign for the 2007 remake of "Halloween," which emerged during a Golden Age for horror remakes. Released between similar updates for "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "Friday the 13," "Halloween" saw director Rob Zombie lend a grimy and raw vision to this masked serial killer. The film didn't offer much new to people who had seen prior "Halloween" installments, but it was playing with some of the most well-known horror movie iconography ever. That alone teed it up for success.

Opening over Labor Day weekend, "Halloween" scored the highest-grossing debut ever for a movie opening over that frame, an achievement it's held for over a decade. Though mixed word-of-mouth ensured it didn't stick around long, it still grossed $58.2 million in North America alone, enough to make nearly four times its $15 million budget. That also made it the highest-grossing "Halloween" movie up to that point in this territory, eclipsing the $55 million sum of 1998 installment "Halloween: H2O." Of course, there were some advantages this new "Halloween" had, like a substantial marketing campaign and the lack of major horror movies in the marketplace at the time of its premiere. Above all else, though, the record-shattering business of Rob Zombie's "Halloween" remake was largely thanks to Michael Myers' return being enough to get people to go to the multiplexes over Labor Day weekend.