FRIDAY 7:45 AM, 5TH UPDATE WRITETHRU: Valentine's Day numbers are differing widely among my sources. But both Fox's critically panned Bruce Willis franchise A Good Day To Die Hard (3,552 theaters) and Relativity's critically panned romantic drama Safe Haven (3,223 theaters) 'performed well' even according to rival studios. As expected, romance author Nicholas Sparks won Valentine's Day with $8.9M. Close behind, because when you think of romance you think of the Die Hard franchise, is the Bruce Willis actioner with around $8.1M. But it should win the long 5-day Presidents Day weekend. Universal's holdover Identity Thief will be #3 with around $5.3M. Summit Entertainment/Lionsgate's two week old Warm Bodies became #4 with around $2.5M. And, to complete the Top Five, Thursday's third opener was Warner Bros' Beautiful Creatures (2,950 theaters) which opened with a disappointing $2.5M. Refined numbers and full analysis later today.
Valentine's Day is always a huge moviegoing event ' 2012's was a $30 million Tuesday - and this year's began auspiciously enough with $840K in Wednesday midnights for A Good Day To Die Hard from 2,328 locations. That's a gift for Twentieth Century Fox and the fifth installment of its 25-year-old franchise tracking strongest with older males. At a cost of $92 million, Willis plays John McClane again who travels to rescue to rescue his CIA operative son played by Jai Courtney, an Australian rising star who just starred with Tom Cruise in Jack Reacher and is on lotsa lists. 'We're thrilled with the number especially for a Wednesday eve in February,' a Fox exec told me Thursday morning. They should be: reviews for this R-rated actioner directed by John Moore were absolutely awful ' only 13% positive on Rotten Tomatoes. ('What reviews? There are reviews on this movie?,' the Fox exec laughed. 'The reports we got from late night shows were people cheering and clapping and just rolling with the movie the way you would expect.')
Internationally, 126 markets have or will be releasing (The major markets not releasing day and date with the U.S. are Australia, Brazil, France, China, and India.) Grosses abroad for A Good Day To Die Hard are currently at a strong $16.5M from the eight Asia Pacific markets released last weekend. It took advantage of the Chinese New Year holiday which began Sunday, a time audiences flock to cinemas.
The only movie with worse reviews was the Lasse Hallstrom-directed Safe Haven which limped to 11% RT positive. Still the PG-13 romantic tearjerker ' yet another one from Sparks (The Notebook, Dear John) ' was expected to win Valentine's Day even if Josh Duhamel doesn't have the sex appeal of Channing Tatum or the acting chops of Ryan Gosling. But Fox is confident that Die Hard 5 will win the weekend. Last time around, 2007's Live Free Or Die Hard opened on a Wednesday and earned $48.3M for the 5-day weekend and $33.3M for the Friday through Sunday. This time around, the studio is expecting $40M for the 5-day holiday through Presidents Day and $28M for the Friday through Sunday. But Hollywood thinks the long weekend number could get to $45M-$50M if the reviews don't hurt its box office too badly. Safe Haven should finish around $25M through Monday.
Lagging both openers today was Warner Bros' Beautiful Creatures. Scripted and directed by Richard LaGravenese, this tween/teen goth romantic fantasy tried to capitalize on the Twilight target audience addicted to the book series ' in this case, the first in the Caster Chronicles novels by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. But the filmmakers then altered it, so fans stayed away. As a result, this PG-13 pic with 48% RT positive will underperform the holiday weekend with less than $20M.
For more estimates listed by title, see box office results here...Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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