The studios brought out a trio of romantic movies for Valentine’s Day, but the couple audiences most wanted to see was Emmet and Wyldstyle, as preliminary numbers at Deadline have THE LEGO MOVIE (Warners) topping the Friday box office with about $13M. Since Lego will benefit the most from the holiday weekend matinee crowd, it will have no trouble taking the rest of the 4-day weekend, for around $60M by Monday, giving it a total of about $140M in the US.
ABOUT LAST NIGHT (Screen Gems/Sony) led the newcomers with $12M on Friday and about $35M by Monday, cementing Kevin Hart’s hold on movie stardom after last month’s $41.5M launch of Ride Along, which is still making money as well (over $3M on Friday).
ENDLESS LOVE (Universal) was smart enough to pick the one opening night when it would inevitably sell some tickets (that was just about the only good decision it made) with $7.5M on Friday and $20M+ by Monday.
ROBOCOP (Sony/MGM) was behind with $6.7M on Friday, but it had opened 2 days earlier and wasn’t aimed at the Valentine’s Day dating crowd. It should recover a bit over the course of the weekend for $20M+ by Monday, although that’s still a considerable underperformance for a movie that cost over $100M to produce (meaning $200M+ with worldwide marketing included).
Friday’s loser was WINTER’S TALE (Warners), with under $4M on Friday and probably less than $12M by Monday. Including marketing costs, it faces a $150M nut worldwide, and has little hope of getting anywhere near that.
MONUMENTS MEN (Sony/20th) led the non-Lego holdovers with $5.4M on Friday, down only around 20% from a week ago and heading for a very solid $20M 4-day weekend. After 12 weeks in theatres, FROZEN (Disney) was up 20% from last Friday with $1.7M, and should be at around a US total of $380M by Monday. THAT AWKWARD MOMENT (Focus/Universal) got a bit of a Valentine’s Day bounce and dropped only 15% from last Friday to $1.5M, despite losing 1/3 of its theatres. LONE SURVIVOR (Universal) was also down just 15% to $1.2M.
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