Valentine's / Presidents' Day weekend 2025
Happy Valentine’s Day everyone, today is a very good box-office day because Males are a little lazy and they procrastinate. So when the panic sets in and the thought of ‘wait, that’s today?’ hits their brains, the movies are a really nice last minute choice. More on that in a minute, but first…
Since Valentine’s Day was on a Wednesday last year, all the movies opened on Wednesday and the weekend didn’t contain any opening day ‘pop’; so the poor distribution methodology combined with titles that were just okay (Bob Marley: One Love, Madame Web, Land of Bad) added up to a weekend that was pretty tepid. So with Disney/Marvel back in the game, and an assist from a Friday Valentine’s Day, we will blow last year’s President’s Day weekend away, possibly getting close to doubling it. We’ve got one more weekend to build a cushion in YTD until we’ll be dealing with Dune 2’s massive opening, and each week will be behind last year.
Back to Valentine’s Day and lazy procrastinating Males (and I am guilty of it too). If you go into any grocery store, CVS, etc today, you’ll see a line of panicky guys waiting to buy flowers, but today shows how clueless the consumer can be in relation to movies. Back in 2010 there was an action film that opened the weekend before Valentine’s Day weekend, and on Valentine’s Day it was one of the biggest percentage jumps from the previous day (similar to films in the marketplace that were better fits for the Valentine’s Day crowd such as Avatar, Dear John and Valentine’s Day). What was the title of that movie? From Paris with Love. Yep, even though it was a hard R action film directed by Pierre Morel, it had Love in the title and clueless (and Panicky) guys said uhhhh….that one is good.
Why is that relevant today? Because of all the holdovers in theaters today, what is the biggest jump from last Friday? Heart Eyes, a horror film. And Love Hurts, an action comedy, isn’t bad either. So I guess we have to start thinking about this when we date films here; I keep wondering what would have happened if Sony called Paddington in Peru Paddington in Love in Peru or something like that. Looking at the history of consumer behavior today historically it might be doing double what it’s doing today.
Anyway, with the same expected accuracy as a Kennedy Center performance calendar, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.
Captain Marvel: Brave New World - Really interesting stuff going on with this film today. The recasting of the lead character takes this IP in a new direction, and I was curious to see what kind of an effect Anthony Mackie would have at the box-office. But also you have another Disney/Marvel that the critics gave a thumbs sideways to, and I was curious to see how that would affect the weekend. When you lay those two factors on top of each other, it looks to me like Mackie brought the AA audience, and that casting decision may have helped them fight through the headwinds of a movie that didn’t turn out great. The traditional coastal megaplexes that drive Superhero movies are doing a little less than they usually do, but there are a lot of the AA skewing theaters that you don’t see at the top of the list with your average Marvel film, but are up there today. The AA strongholds in the Southeast such as Atlanta, Baltimore and Charlotte are really good today, and without them this could have been just a little better than something like The Marvels. Of course today is Valentine’s Day and this will (by far) be the best day of the weekend, but for now this looks like a 3 day of about $75 million and a 4 day of about $90 million.
Paddington in Peru - This film opened to monster numbers in the UK last fall, and it’s solid here looking somewhere between the gross of Paddington and Paddington 2. They got tremendous reviews again (currently at 93%) but we’ll have to wait and see if this film is immortalized like Paddington 2 was in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. This film has some adult appeal so it should get a twofer and get some V day business today, as well as the family bounce tomorrow, and end up in the mid teens for 3 days and the high teens for 4.
Heart Eyes - Thanks to the dumbshits that think this would be good for V Day, this should only be down 10% or so for a 3 day of about $7 million, and a 4 day of about $8 million. Idiots.
Ne Zha 2 - The Chinese sensation ($1 billion in box-office just in China) opened in 600 theaters and it’s really good, looking like a 3 day of about $5 million and a 4 day of about $6 million.