'The Possession' leads Friday box office: $6.1 million

Not all Americans are spending their Labor Day weekend watching college football or hitting the beach one last time. Some of them — a modest number — are heading to the movies, too.

Haunted horror film The Possession topped the box office on Friday with $6.1 million and should easily win the holiday weekend with about $20 million in four days. The Lionsgate release, which stars Kyra Sedgwick and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, will be the first horror film to top Labor Day weekend since The Final Destination in 2009.

The Weinstein Company’s Lawless found a more modest $2.8 million on Friday, and may gross about $11 million by Monday. That would give the Shia LaBeouf/Tom Hardy picture, which opened on Wednesday, just over $13 million in its first six days.

For now, the next two spots on the chart are filled by The Expendables 2 and The Bourne Legacy, which yesterday grossed $2.2 million and $1.8 million, respectively, but there are no numbers yet available for the documentary 2016: Obama’s America, which this weekend expanded into 1,750 theaters and is likely to have earned similar numbers.

There aren’t yet any Friday figures for The Oogieloves in the BIG Balloon Adventure, either. The kiddie movie has a great shot at breaking the record for the worst-ever debut for a film playing in more than 2,000 theaters. In its first two days, it earned just $225,588 total and yielded laughable per theater averages of $47 (Wednesday) and $57 (Thursday).

Check back tomorrow and on Monday for more box office updates, and follow me on Twitter for additional analysis and up-to-the-minute results.