The Help Box Office | featured news

"The Help" has stayed on the job over Labor Day, finishing as the No. 1 film for the third-straight weekend. The acclaimed drama about Southern black maids speaking out during the civil-rights movement took in $19 million over the long holiday weekend, according to studio estimates Monday.

Early Friday returns indicate that The Help will gross around $14 million for the four-day holiday weekend. By Monday, the female-fueled drama will have jumped $120 million mark--exceeding even the most optimistic expectations. DreamWorks and Participant Media produced and co-financed the $25 million movie.

"The Help" remained Hollywood's top draw with $14.3 million on a slow late-summer weekend whose business was even more sluggish as many East Coast theaters closed to ride out the storm there....

Zoe Saldana's "Colombiana" comes in at No. 2, followed by "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" and "Our Idiot Brother," with Hurricane Irene taking a big bite out of the domestic box office as theaters close on the East Coast.

“The Help” continues to clean up at the box office, taking over the No. 1 spot with $20.5 million in its second weekend. The drama about Southern black maids had debuted in second-place a week earlier. “The Help” raised its domestic total to $71.8 million and bumped “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” which slipped to No. 2 with $16.3 million after two weekends at the top.

Every one of my sources had a different Top 5 list all day -- and there wasn't even a consensus until tonight that DreamWorks' holdover The Help (which needs none) is Friday's No. 1 movie. The problem was that the new releases -- Dimension/Weinstein Co's Spy Kids 4D, Nu Image/Millenium/Lionsgate's Conan The Barbarian, and DreamWorks/Disney's Fright Night are all bunched together behind another holdover, Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes.