Box Office: Significant Shake-Up

By our guest blogger, Tim Strain

This weekend saw a notable upswing in business, as “Valentine’s Day,” “Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lighting Thief,” and “The Wolfman” all opened successfully over the double-holiday weekend.

“Valentine’s Day” capitalized on looking and feeling exactly like last year’s successful “He’s Just Not That Into You” as well the holiday weekend, grossing a spectacular $52 million. This is the second-highest opening weekend for any romance, behind “Sex and the City’s” $57 million two years ago. Casting directors Deborah Aquila and Mary Tricia Wood deserve a raise--they put together a cast that appeals to just about every demographic in the book. You’ve seen the ads. You know who is in it. It will likely have a huge fourth day with the Presidents’ Day bump, something around $15-22 million. This bodes well for the movement of feminine how-to guides being adapted into narrative films, with “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” due next year. (I’m not kidding.)

It was a photo finish for second place, with “Percy Jackson’s” $31.1 million narrowly topping “The Wolfman’s” $30.6 million. “The Wolfman’s” solid opening is a sigh of relief for Universal, which has inexplicably dumped $150 million into a period creature feature. Christopher Columbus brought Harry Potter to the big screen nine years ago and looks to have another hit on his hands in “The Lightning Thief.” If this proves to be a success, look for the next “Percy Jackson” book, “The Sea of Monsters,” to reach the silver screen.

“Avatar” continues to cruise, dropping to fourth place but still amassing a $22 million in its ninth weekend, just a silly 4% drop. All that and in 315 fewer theaters than last weekend. It has $659 million in the bank domestically and about $2.3 billion around the globe. So yeah.

Last weekend’s openers, “Dear John” and “From Paris with Love,” dropped 49% and 42%, respectively. Not bad stats, but “John’s” numbers took a big hit with “Valentine’s Day’s” presence, and “Paris” is a full-on bust, only amassing $16 million so far against a $52 million budget.

The weekend’s other opener, the Fox Searchlight-distributed Bollywood film “My Name is Khan,” made $1.86 million in 120 theaters over the three-day. Its $15,500 per-theater average was the best of the weekend.