Weekend Estimates: Fifty Shades Dominates Valentine’s Day Weekend

February 15, 2015

Fifty Shades of Grey poster

Fifty Shades of Grey has overcome poor (although generally not disastrous) reviews and unusually risque material to dominate at the box office over Valentine’s Day weekend. Universal is projecting a $81.67 million three-day weekend as of Sunday morning, the second-biggest February weekend at the box office, just behind, ironically, The Passion of the Christ. Passion’s weekend was $83.8 million, and Fifty Shades could still overtake it for the best weekend of all-time in the month. Watching people suffer is apparently a thing in February.

Fifty Shades had a stellar day on Saturday, grossing around $37 million, making it easily the biggest day for a movie in the month of February. The previous highest performance on Valentine’s Day was $23.39 million, earned by the movie Valentine’s Day back in 2010.

Kingsman: The Secret Service is also having a very good weekend with $35.6 million projected for the three-day portion of the weekend. It’s expected to have better legs through the weekend, and will actually probably come close to catching Fifty Shades on Monday. By the end of the long weekend, Kingsman is expected to have around $41 million. Fifty Shades will have topped $90 million by then.

Returning movies are generally doing well over the long weekend, with The SpongeBob Movie expected to be down 45% from its impressive opening for $30.5 million. It will top $100 million on Monday after 11 days in release. Fellow family-friendly movie Paddington will have the best week-to-week performance, down 21% to $4.1 million for $62.3 million after five weekends. American Sniper, meanwhile, will top $300 million today, and could yet get a boost from the Oscars next weekend.

In limited release, What We Do in the Shadows is having a terrific weekend, with $65,830 projected from just two theaters. Whether the horror/comedy/cult film can break out in wider release remains to be seen, but starting with the best theater average of the year is impressive indeed.

Bruce Nash,

Filed under: Weekend Estimates, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, Kingsman: The Secret Service, Fifty Shades of Grey, Paddington, American Sniper, What We Do in the Shadows