Valentine's Day Massacres Competition

Warner Bros. Valentine's Day opened this Valentine's Day weekend, and destroyed the competition with a whopping $66.9 million gross over the four day President's Day weekend in the US (and Family Day weekend in many parts of Canada).

Family-friendly Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief coming in second at $38.75 million.  If it can hold over well in its second weekend, expect more Percy Jackson books to be converted to films in the near future.

Universal's The Wolfman starring Benicio Del Toro came in third place, grossing $36.5 million.  It'll have a tough time recouping its estimated $150 million production cost.  The film also hasn't scored well on audience exit polls, which probably explains why it sat on Universal's shelf for 17 months before being released.

Avatar came in a strong fourth place in its 9th weekend with $30 million over the four days, bringing it's cumulative domestic gross to $667 million and a whopping $2.35 billion worldwide. 

Last week's number one film, Dear John, fell to fifth place with $18.8 million, bringing it's domestic total to $56.7 million.

Overall the weekend was the strongest President's Day weekend in history, and Sunday was the highest grossing Valentine's Day of all time.

Expect Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island to be the big draw this coming weekend.  The R-rated picture starring Leonardo DiCaprio can be expected to bring in around $35 million.

Avatar Knocked Off Its Perch

Hit by a reduced audience because of the Superbowl and some creative Superbowl counter-programming on the part of estrogen-fest Dear John (which grossed an estimated $32.4M, the highest gross ever during the Superbowl weekend), Avatar has finally fallen from the #1 spot on the box office chart in its eighth weekend.  While the film's incredible box office run is certainly far from over, it won't have a shot at one of Titanic's few remaining box office records, most consecutive weeks at #1 (Titanic's record is 15 weeks).

It is worth noting, however, that 47 days into Avatar's run, Titanic's all-time domestic box office gross has now been defeated.  Avatar now holds the record for domestic, international and worldwide grosses.  Inflation-adjusted is a completely different picture, of course, but the reality is that only two months ago, many people wondered if Avatar would ever be able to turn a profit.  Now the only question is how long do audiences have to wait for the inevitable sequels?