“Don’t Breathe” Ends “Suicide Squads” Reign

For the first time since July, there's a new No. 1 movie. Even more pleasantly surprising: Don't Breathe is a live-action movie that's not based on a pre-existing property! That hasn't happened since The Boss opened back in April. It's another success story for a lower-budget horror flick, following Lights Out and The Boy. It's almost as if you don't spend a gazillion dollars, you can turn a nice profit on those movies.

Suicide Squad finally fell to No. 2 with its smallest week-to-week drop yet. It's now in danger of falling a little short of $300 million. Still, it's made more than double that overseas for the No. 6 take of the year worldwide. Kubo and the Two Strings fell only 37 percent, far better than any of the new films it faced off against last week. (War Dogs and Ben-Hur got eviscerated.)

Sausage Party approached $80 million in its third weekend. It only made $165,000 more than Jason Statham's latest: a sequel to 2011's remake of The Mechanic. Resurrection made even less than its predecessor. It's surprising it got a sequel at all, considering the remake barely cracked $60 million worldwide.

Outside the top 5:

• This Weekend's Indie Champ: A restoration of the 1992 film Howards End took the gold, but of the new films, John Krasinski's dramedy The Hollers averaged $11,517 on each of its four screens.
• Southside with You, the fictionalized account of Barack and Michelle Obama's first date, took in $3 million.
• Hands of Stone, about the life of boxer Roberto Durán, did much worse, taking in an embarrassing $1.7 million.

Next week:

After a few years of slim pickings on Labor Day Weekend, there are two new films opening. The Light Between Oceans is director Derek Cianfrance's jump to the big leagues, adapting a romantic best-seller with Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender. One hopes for an intelligent version of something like the Nicholas Sparks factory, but it could get lost in the shuffle. It's more likely that Morgan becomes a minor hit. The sci-fi flick about a child with special powers seems likely to pull No.1 away from Don't Breathe, since horror flicks typically have a big drop-off in their second weekends. I'm guessing $17 million.