Critical Warnings Ignored, 'Valentine's Day' Opens Big with $14.6 Million
Records mean nothing anymore
I've waited long enough, apparently the results for six films are all I am going to get this Saturday morning as I have used both Variety and The Hollywood Reporter to gather the list at the end of this post.
First off, it looks like we are in for a huge weekend beginning with the $14.6 million the critically panned Valentine's Day took in on Friday. Variety's Andrew Stewart says it is the highest grossing comedy for a Friday during Presidents Day Weekend, which tells me we are looking at far too many caveats to come up with a record, but whatever. The film is now likely to run into the $45+ million range for the three-day weekend and over at Deadline Nikki Finke is calling it a potential $60 million four-day.
As I was telling a friend this morning, I can understand people wanting to go see a romantic comedy in the theaters. They are the kinds of movies that just make an afternoon at the movies enjoyable, but that is only when the movies themselves are enjoyable. The trailers for Valentine's Day are cautionary at best and a 15% rating at RottenTomatoes and a 34 at MetaCritic don't spell out good things.
Like I said, I can understand wanting to see a rom-com in theaters, but at 2 hours and five minutes I can't understand paying good money to see such a film. I would assume most people will walk out of the film, having spent hard earned money to see it, saying, "It wasn't that bad," but when you're taking my $12.50+ I want a movie that's more than "not bad." Especially when I learn Julia Roberts was paid $500,000 a minute just to be in it. I would much rather stay home and catch Love Actually and You've Got Mail.
In the comment section of my review someone asked why I continue to see these movies, wrongly assuming I hate romantic comedies at the same time. Aside from the obvious answer, which is to say it is my job, the even better answer is to tell you critics see films so in some cases you don't have to. I love romantic comedies, as I think everyone does, but I'm not going to give the genre any slack just because they hired a bunch of TV actors and called them movie stars.
Second on the Friday totem pole is Universal's The Wolfman, which garnered an estimated $9.8 million from the masses and most likely won't see the same kind of traction Valentine's Day will over the weekend given the holiday and its R-rating. However, Fox's Percy Jackson and the Olympians will probably see a generous bump considering it is a family friendly film, which means its Friday $9.7 million could translate to something like $30+ million for the three-day.
Last week's #1 film, Dear John, is in a battle with Avatar to see if the sappy romance can once again top the sci-fi all-time #1 for a second week in a row. The holiday helps, but will couples decide to see the love between a blue alien and a white man blossom on Valentine's or just another white couple fall in love? Tough call.
Finally, Lionsgate's From Paris with Love serves as the alternate to all causes, earning $2.7 million on Friday.
Laremy will be here Sunday morning with the complete three-day results, but for now here's what I was able to collect concerning Friday's numbers:
- Valentine's Day – $14.6 million
- The Wolfman – $9.8 million
- Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief – $9.7 million
- Avatar – $4.5 million
- Dear John – $4.1 million
- From Paris With Love – $2.7 million
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"Critical Message Ignored," LOL ! You guys really are sheltered, living-in-a-vacuum nerds if you think I'm not gonna take my girl to see this movie just because you say so. Valentine's Day is for her and I will watch whatever crap chick-flick she wishes. Like your ego maniacal review is gonna change that.
FROM BRAD: Let me get this straight, to have an informed opinion and offer a suggestion is to be a sheltered, living-in-a-vacuum ego maniacal nerd? Have fun at the "crap chick-flick" you are about to watch, you are only proving the headline is fact.
@Jim_A: Valentine's Day should be just as much about the guy as it should be about the girl. It is a day about enjoying the company of each other much more than it is about one member of the relationship running the whole show. If she is unwilling to compromise on a decent movie, then I pity you. You clearly have no perspective about what a real relationship is, and it is because of guys like you that the holiday has become as ridiculously overblown as it has.
I also don't understand the point of visiting a film-oriented website, reading an informed review, and then calling that reviewer an "ego maniacal nerd." Don't read reviews if you don't care about them.
Brad your right and am not just saying that cuz am a dude but cuz i saw this when it was called "He's just not that into to you" and this is just another cookie cutter and now there will be more of these star packed movies that have no story no direction just good advertising and people should not be satisfied with crapola ,i.e transformers .
Darn. I wish Up in the Air was back in the top 10. It was wonderful.
i do not know now you would give the wolfman a C …..that movie was complete garbage me and my girlfriend even joked saying " wanna go see valentines day" ….. now if that doesnt say nething …idont kno what will change other ppls minds to stay away from it
@tiny tim: I absolutely agree with you. My problem with "Valentine's Day" (the movie, not the retarded holiday) is what it stands for. Here is a movie that was announced and put into production just to mimic the success of a previous movie & a somewhat major holiday. Here is a film that started casting "stars" before they even had a solid script in place. Here is a film that was made not to entertain, but to blatantly profit off consumers. Here is a film that shows as long as you market well to a certain demographic, and you hide the fact that you have no script with a cast full of well-known tabloid fodder, it will still be a financial success. All this opening does is encourage Hollywood to make more cookie cutter crap like this.
So thank you movie watchers of America. You have no one else to blame but yourselves.
I saw Percy Jackson to a almost full screening, with a ton of kids in the lobby afterward, so what else could they be seeing? I thought it was a solid movie. Maybe $40M on a four day weekend? Mom's taking kids out of the house on the redneck holiday (what I call the Dayota 500).
Next week shutter island takes #1 at 50+ million
@connor: Next week, change your prediction. Apparently people still haven't realized what an R-rating can do to a film.
Two summers ago when the Sex and the City movie was on, two people came out of the theatre saying "It's fluff" in an aloof tone. The people who watch these kind of movies know that it's crap. The bad quality of the script is as important now as it was to Jacobean alcoholic theatre goers. I don't really care if that's a bad thing as long as I get to see the movies I wanna see.
I'm not on full attack mode, but I didn't mention the gender of the people who like those kind of films. So should most critics.
And I'm gonna see Shutter Island on Thursday. For free. I know how it will end.
Have I just been seeing too many Oscar bait movies to respect these films? It must be that people are tired of cutting back, and saving their money from the recession. Like how demand skyrocketed after World War II. I just don't get it otherwise.
I did the same as Laremy and tried to fit the weekend into an overall gross prediction. I even thought it would do better than Laremy did, with a 40% increase about right. I thought it would be a good tactic with the uncertainty of this weekend, but it didn't really help. Of course underestimating the new releases therefor led to overestimating the old releases.
Last weekend, the estimates were too high; perhaps that will happen again.
O.K. Let's see. Veritably all the date dollars went to Valentine's Day. The Percy Jackson books are bigger than I thought. Everyone else went to see The Wolfman. Older titles withered under the competitve storm. I suppose I could have seen this coming if I had more respect for these movies.
Yup. Weekend estimates say that Crazy Heart got yet ANOTHER increase and Up in the Air only dropped 25%. Valentine's Day made $52 million and Avatar only dropped a shocking 4%. So, we were both right: you predicted that Valentine's Day would get the majority of couples' date sales (which it probably did), and I correctly predicted that Up in the Air and Crazy Heart would benefit with good holds. Even When in Rome only dropped 38%.
The main reason im surprised this did so well so far isnt because of all the bad reviews, but becuase I had heard next to nothing about it befor this week and havent even seen it advertised….atleast we have Shutter Island comeing next week tho.
Big numbers for Valentine's Day and Percy Jackson. The Wolfman also got a good result. Great weekend for everyone!
Saw Crazy Heart yesterday great movie Jeff Bridges deserves the best actor award, don't understand why Maggie Gyllenhaal is up for supporting actress when she was the only actress in it.
But Gyllenhaal did give a great performance, right? Sorry, I'm just trying to get my Oscar predictions straight. Also: was the show sold out or close to being sold out?
To all those lamenting the gross of "Valetine's Day"–chill out. Here's what'll happen: a 5-15% drop on Saturday, which isn't that respectable for a rom-com. Sunday will have a good hold, sadly, because it's Valentine's Day. It may even see a rise.
But then will come a gigantic drop. A huge drop. Next weekend, I will be very surprised if it doesn't drop at least 60%. It'll be one of the worst drops for a large romantic comedy ever. Why? Because, just like "Friday the 13th" last year, it is capitalizing on a specific day of its opening weekend, and past that nobody else will be interested. Also, the word of mouth will be terrible.
As for Wolfman, it's also going to have bad drops. A bad Saturday hold (-20 to -30%), and then next weekend a -60+% drop.
Percy Jackson will perform quite adequately, I believe. It won't hold amazingly, but it'll certainly do itself proud, and of the three new openers, it'll end up on the top of the heap, despite its opening day being the lowest. Just wait and see!
And give another round of applause to Avatar! Sure, it's no longer number one, but its drop is only going to be around -15 to -20% again. Laremy predicted way too low, but I was right: like "The Hangover" and "The Blind Side," it doesn't need to be #1 for people to still be interested in it. I feel a pretty good hold for next weekend as well, where it will serve as a great holdover alternative to the demographics that don't want to see "Shutter Island" (it'll as benefit a tiny bit the bad WOM of Valentine's Day and Wolfman, which won't be as popular next weekend).
I'm starting to think that Shutter Island will be a rare case for a horror movie. This is obvious, but horror films almost ALWAYS drop big time in their 2nd weekend, but Shutter Island could be different.
Valentines Day was always going to be crap, I mean it's a movie made solely to benefit from a Hallmark invented holiday so no wonder it's done well financially, but lets face it, revolutionize the silver screen it was never gonna do.