We’ve just moved past Valentine’s Day weekend, a time when our thoughts turned to love. And while we tend to celebrate the occasion in different ways (some with gallons of ice cream), most couples do tend to stick with some time-honored traditions. They give each other candy in heart-shaped boxes. They go to romantic dinners. And then, to cap the evening, they go to the local movie theater and watch Bruce Willis blow things up.
Or so it was this Valentine’s Day weekend. Willis’ A Good Day to Die Hard roared into theaters and exploded for an estimated $25 million ($33.2 million counting Valentine’s Day proper)—enough to claim the box office crown and dance a little jig. Granted, the movie’s success wasn’t enough to inspire a full-throated “Yippie-ki-yay!” from studio execs at 20th Century Fox; this, the fifth installment in Willis’ long-running Die Hard series, is tracking behind Live Free or Die Hard financially and earned (as of this posting) just a 16% “freshness” rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But a win is a win, and since the film was matched up against three other semi-formidable newcomers, the folks at Fox will surely take it.
Not that any of those other new films were able to knock off Identity Thief for second place. The R-rated comedy pratfalled its way to another $23.4 million, bringing its total two-weekend run to about $70.7 mil.
Safe Haven, the latest Nicholas Sparks romance to weep—I mean, sweep—into theaters, finished third with $21.4 million. And the star-studded animated romp Escape From Planet Earth, capitalizing on a two-month drought of family-friendly flicks, drew in $16.1 million worth of truly desperate moms, dads and kids.
Warm Bodies continues to show signs of life, crawling to yet another $9 million and a fifth-place finish. The zombies edged out the witches in Beautiful Creatures, the latest supernatural YA novel to get a full cinematic treatment. While Beautiful Creatures‘ makers were surely hoping that it would be the start of an incredibly lucrative franchise, (á la Harry Potter and Twilight), its $7.5 million take is not a particularly magical start. In fact, right now it looks like something that would fit right in during a Die Hard movie: a bomb.
Final figures update: 1. A Good Day to Die hard, $24.8 million; 2. Identity Thief, $23.7 million; 3. Safe Haven, $21.4 million; 4. Escape From Planet Earth, $15.9 million; 5. Warm Bodies, $8.9 million.
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