Since the mid-2010s, romantic fare has been hard to come by once Valentine’s Day rolls around. Hollywood dialing back mid-budget rom-coms and romantic dramas means that this holiday frame has belonged more to genre movie blockbusters like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Alita: Battle Angel, and The Great Wall over the last decade. Valentine’s Day weekend 2025 looks to continue this status quo, as Captain America: Brave New World, Paddington in Peru, and a slew of Valentine’s-adjacent horror and action movies dominate the landscape. Unless you want to see superhero movies or R-rated skewerings of romantic features, those wanting to venture to their local multiplex this holiday weekend are out of luck.
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It wasn’t always this way, though. For many years, it was common for romantic movies to break out big time over the Valentine’s Day weekend frame. Not only that, but the smaller scale of these features (compared to a typical Marvel movie) meant that there was plenty of room in the marketplace for counterprogramming to flourish. Valentine’s Day weekend 2010, which turns 15 this year, perfectly encapsulated this phenomenon. This particular year had plenty of cinematic goodies to love, and the box office prospered as a result.
These Movies Dominated Valentine’s Day Weekend 2010
Not surprisingly, the 2010 Valentine’s Day box office win belonged to a rom-com entitled Valentine’s Day. This Garry Marshall directorial effort received dreadful reviews and is pretty much despised today. However, this motion picture was irresistible to moviegoers back in February 2010. Over its three-day debut alone, Valentine’s Day grossed a staggering $56.26 million. It’s hard to imagine a rom-com ever opening to that kind of cash, but that’s what happens when you time a date night movie to the ultimate romantic holiday.
The PG-13 Valentine’s Day had a little bit of appeal for everyone helping it score such a mighty opening weekend. Basically, The Avengers of rom-com actors, the title had actors like Anne Hathaway, Ashton Kutcher, Jamie Foxx, Bradley Cooper, Julie Roberts, Patrick Dempsey, Jennifer Garner, and so many others in key roles. Meanwhile, the fleeting presence of Taylor Lautner and Taylor Swift in the cast ensured that 2010 teenagers (who might not have even been alive when Pretty Woman premiered) would be interested in the project. Valentine’s Day got some of the worst reviews of any 2010 movie in wide release. However, a star-studded cast appealing to multiple generations and an optimal holiday release led to it grabbing eye-popping box office for a rom-com.
Valentine’s Day didn’t exclusively dominate the frame, though. Benicio Del Toro’s R-rated horror movie The Wolfman opened in second place with $31.47 million, a debut that would’ve been solid if the feature didn’t cost an excessive $150 million to make. In third place, the family-friendly YA-novel adaptation Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief bowed to $31.23 million. All three new wide releases opened to $30+ million over Valentine’s Day weekend: that’s what happens when you have a little something for everyone.
[RELATED: The 7 Biggest February Movies in History Will Surprise You]
Movie Theaters Need Variety to Survive
The weekend of February 12-14, 2010, was an even rarer frame in cinema history, housing four different movies that grossed $20+ million each, as Avatar (in its ninth weekend of release) inched up 3% from the previous weekend to gross another $23.61 million. Meanwhile, holdovers Dear John and Tooth Fairy added a combined $22.1 million to the marketplace. Just outside the top ten, the Shah Rukh Khan star vehicle My Name Is Khan debuted to $1.94 million from 120 theaters. Truly, this was a weekend where moviegoers could see anything and everything at their local multiplex.
Compare this weekend to Valentine’s Day 2020, when Sonic the Hedgehog sped into the marketplace and topped the box office. The only new romantic title around was The Photograph, a low-budget drama that never became a go-to date night phenomenon. Newcomer Fantasy Island made less than 40% of The Wolfman’s opening weekend while Birds of Prey’s second weekend was noticeably lower than Avatar’s ninth frame. Sonic The Hedgehog had a domestic debut reminiscent of Valentine’s Day’s opening, but the marketplace largely belonged to just this critter.
Hollywood’s abandonment of mid-budget and smaller movies had left the Valentine’s Day box office landscape a shell of its former self in just ten years. That pre-March 2020 problem of major studios producing too few movies has only gotten worse after the COVID-19 pandemic forever changed the entertainment industry. With a meager slate of newcomers (not to mention a complete lack of straightforward romantic movies) posied to dominate Valentine’s Day weekend 2025, Valentine’s Day weekend 2010’s eclectic slate of movies is a relic from a bygone era.
If you don’t put a deluge of different kinds of movies in theaters, people won’t show up. The year Valentine’s Day and The Wolfman dominated this famously romantic weekend vividly reflected the virtues of a diverse theatrical cinema slate. With Captain America: Brave New World now set to dominate the Valentine’s Day 2025 box office without breaking a sweat, it’s clear Hollywood has lost command of the variety that used to drive holiday frames like Valentine’s Day weekend 2010.
Captain America: Brave New World will be in theaters this weekend. The Wolfman can be streamed on AMC+.
