Audiences swoon for 'Valentine's Day'

By Sarah Sluis

Valentine's Day swept the holiday weekend with an estimated $66.8 million gross over the four-day period, exceeding industry expectations. The timely romantic comedy built on its audience through the weekend, peaking on the titular Sunday holiday before dropping by half on Monday. The movie handily beat the $52 million box-office record for President's Day weekend, set by Ghost Rider in 2007. With an expired holiday in the title, the movie's week-over-week future is more uncertain, but its strong opening created a high mountain to slide down.

The Wolfman and Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief were neck and neck through Sunday, with about $31 million apiece, but Percy Jackson pulled ahead during the Monday school holiday to finish with $38.7 million for the four-day weekend. Given The Wolfman's multiple delays and underwhelming reviews, Universal is probably breathing easy about its $36.4 million opening weekend--even if it isn't close to recouping the movie's $100 million-plus production costs.

Directed by Chris Columbus (who kicked off the Harry Potter series), Percy Jackson, which is based on a series of children's books, could still be the beginning of a film franchise. However, the scale may have been too large. With a $95 million production budget, this movie seems to have been imagined for a Harry Potter-size audience instead of one much smaller, and a $38 million opening weekend won't be enough to make a film that expensive worthwhile.

Beyond the top ten, Fox Searchlight scored an impressive debut with My Name is Khan, a Bollywood production about "an Indian in America battling the double whammy of living with Asperger's Syndrome and as a Muslim man in the post-9/11 world," according to the THR review by Kirk Honeycutt. The romantic drama placed thirteenth with a $2.2 million estimated gross over the four-day weekend. With a targeted 120-theatre release, I suspect that Fox Searchlight cherry-picked its locations based on data from the run of Slumdog Millionaire, the Indian-themed movie that swept the Oscars last year.

Searchlight also placed a film in the top ten with Crazy Heart, which expanded to 1,005 locations and brought in $4.2 million for a ninth place finish. The movie, which stars Jeff Bridges in an Oscar-nominated role, has seen the biggest box-office boost due to its nominations, in part because it released just before the Oscar cutoff date and is still a fresh title.

Among returning films, Avatar headed the pack with a $30 million gross over four days, propelling the movie up 31% from last week (for four days) and 3% (for three days).

Even with tough competition from Valentine's Day, romantic weepie Dear John held on with another $18.8 million. Kid-friendly Tooth Fairy benefited from family crowds on Monday and dropped just 9% to $7.7 million.

This Friday, another delayed movie, Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island, will make its debut into a wide-open field. Only holdovers and small releases, including a four-theatre unveiling of Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer, will serve as competition.