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The summer is winding down, yet Hollywood still has a few releases planned between now and Labor Day. We can readily appreciate the quality of these titles by examining yesterday’s box office. A new title debuted.

The film in question is Hit and Run; judging by its opening day box office, you must not know it. The Dax Shepard/Bradley Cooper opened to $625,000. And no, there isn’t a digit missing in that number. Hit and Run entered a marketplace featuring lackluster titles comprising the body of the top ten. Despite this, it could only manage eighth place. Folks, if a movie’s first day is neck and neck with the sixth day of Sparkle, it’s not doing well.

Yes, Hit and Run could stage a recovery of sorts of the weekend. And yes, the movie did cost “only” $22 million to produce. I think that we can all agree at this point that there were better investment opportunities available for our friends at Open Road Films. As a reminder, this is the distribution arm created by Regal Entertainment Group and AMC Entertainment, the latter of which was recently bought a Chinese consortium.

Open Road Films has largely chosen good projects thus far, The Grey being their strongest performer thus far. Hit and Run will have to earn $12.4 million to surpass Silent House and thereby avoid becoming the worst performing for Open Road thus far. And Silent House cost a frugal $2 million to create. Of course, I have to believe that despite the commercials, Hit and Run is a better movie than Silent House, currently the worst of 52 movies I have seen thus far in 2012. In case you are wondering, Silent House’s opening weekend gross was $6,660,234. Hit and Run is not a mortal lock right now to earn that much in five days. I have to believe it will but that is far from a foregone conclusion.

The number one movie for the sixth consecutive day was The Expendables 2. Its $2,163,690 represents a 33% drop from Tuesday, steepest in the top five. The odd aspect of the box office pattern of The Expendables 2 is that it has a distinct opportunity to win a second weekend. Hit and Run clearly will not beat The Expendables…or anything else, for that matter. The Apparition and Premium Rush are the remaining two releases on Friday. If neither of them tops $13 million, The Expendables 2 will repeat. Obviously, we are facing a lousy box office weekend if this is a realistic possibility.

There isn’t much movement throughout the rest of the top ten. The Bourne Legacy earned $1,444,905 and now has a domestic total of $74,778,840, meaning it will earn over $75 million during its first two weeks in theaters. Its global take crossed $100 million on Tuesday as well. The Campaign and ParaNorman switched back spots from Tuesday. With $1,257,872, The Campaign’s 26% decline allows it to surpass the $1,197,541 of ParaNorman, which fell 31%.

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