Moviegoing is slowly getting back into fashion, with Paramount’s Bob Marley: One Love biopic seeing an estimated $12 million on Wednesday. That’s a record for a movie playing on a midweek Valentine’s Day, besting the $11.6M made by the 2012 Channing Tatum-Rachel McAdams romance The Vow.
Sony/Marvel’s Madame Web starring Dakota Johnson trails with $5M-$5.5M today.
Projecting out six days is a bit iffy at this point. Some believe that Bob Marley is frontloaded, yet there’s an argument to be made that this movie should not be comped to The Color Purple — one is about an iconic music artist and the other is based on a Broadway musical. Nonetheless, at this point, studios are sticking to forecasts of $30M+ for Bob Marley: One Love over six days and $20M+ for Madame Web.
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Reviews for Bob Marley: One Love are at 41% Rotten, though it’s believed that the audience scores will come in higher for the biopic directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green and starring Kingsley Ben-Adir. RT audience scores already stand at 100%.
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Reviews for Madame Web starring Dakota Johnson and Sydney Sweeney are horrible at 17% on RT. The audience score also is low, currently at 58%.
For those keeping score, the movie with highest gross on Valentine’s Day belongs to 20th Century Fox/Marvel’s Deadpool with $42.6M in 2016.
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It isn’t common for a movie to open hard on Valentine’s Day, and neither Bob Marley nor Madame Web had previews. Previous midweek Valentine’s Day opening titles include 2019’s Alita: Battle Angel ($8.7M Thursday), 2013’s A Good Day to Die Hard ($8.2M Thursday) and the 2013 feature take on Nicholas Sparks’ novel Safe Haven ($8.8M Thursday).