Weekend projections: “Wuthering Heights” wins weekend, while all movies benefit from double-holiday weekend

As expected, “Wuthering Heights” is the big winner at the box office this weekend, with Warner Bros. pegging its 3-day opening at $34.8 million, and expecting $40 million over the four-day President’s Day weekend. That’s a bit behind our model’s Friday-morning prediction, largely because the love was spread around on Valentine’s Day. Rather than one must-see romantic movie, we have a lot of like-to-see couple-friendly movies, with Solo Mio doing particularly well on Saturday, along with Send Help, and even Crime 101. Family fare, led by GOAT’s excellent $26 million over three days, is also benefiting from the long weekend.

Here are the official studio projections for the weekend (click the image for a full chart of all films reporting so far).

“Wuthering Heights” isn’t quite delivering the earnings that looked possible on Friday, but still marks another success for Warner Bros., which is currently the only major studio committed to making original movies. This is the WB’s ninth consecutive wide release to debut at the top of the box office chart, and confirms yet again that movie fans will show up for creatively daring films if the ingredients are right. In this case, Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi, and producer/writer/director Emerald Fennell deliver the goods. Another $42 million internationally, with the UK in the lead with $10.3 million this weekend, means the film will end the long weekend with around $82 million worldwide, which is already more than its $80-million budget.

GOAT will land in second place this weekend, and is doing excellent business on a day-by-day basis. It should pick up another $6 million on Monday, per Sony, which will be easily the best performer tomorrow, and will take it to $32 million over four days.

Crime 101’s third-place finish means a one-two-three result for new original movies this weekend. After starting out with disappointing preview numbers on Thursday, the action movie has gained pace through the weekend, and will end up being the biggest out-performer compared to our model’s Friday-morning predictions.

Overall, the weekend is looking very healthy, with three of the four new releases out-performing expectations, and four returning films dropping by less than 10% from last weekend. That means the final market total over the three-day weekend will be about 20% ahead of our prediction, and will easily top $100 million. The only piece of bad news is the comparison with last year, when Captain America: Brave New World opened with $88.8 million. Three solid opening weekends this year isn’t enough to top one middling MCU release at the box office, but this is a weekend that has brought a much more diverse audience into movie theaters.

– Studio weekend projections

– All-time top-grossing movies in North America

– All-time top-grossing movies worldwide

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Bruce Nash, bruce.nash@the-numbers.com