'Shutter Island' scares away the competition with monster $14 million Friday

Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio are proving they are a profitable combination at the box office.  After a massive $14 million opening on Friday, their latest collaboration, the long-delayed "Shutter Island," is on its way to an impressive $35-38 million opening this weekend.  This follows two $100 million plus grossers in a row, "The Aviator" and "The Departed."  While both of those films landed Best Picture nominations, distributor Paramount Pictures may just have to be satisfied with a tidy profit on on this one.

Falling hard like a bad romance to the second spot was Warner Bros.' "Valentine's Day."  The ensemble rom com dropped 61% grossing only $5.6 million on Friday for a new total of $75.8 million.  Considering it only cost $52 million to produce, Warner Bros. can more than live with the steep drop considering it should find an eventual $100 million gross and many profitable returns.

Last weekends family find "Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief" came in third with $3.96 million and a new domestic cume of $43.4 million. However, it will most likely switch to fourth place when the weekend is over as "Avatar with right behind it with $3.9 million. The Oscar contender has been remarkable in reaching an all-time record U.S. gross of $675 million so far and only has two more weeks before "Alice in Wonderland" shows up to gobble up its 3-D and IMAX screens.

Last week's other big opener, "The Wolfman," fell 70% grossing only $2.9 million.  The expensive event flick has now grossed $43.4 million to date and will have to hope for strong overseas numbers to even approach breaking even.

Look for complete box office weekend estimates tomorrow on HitFix.

Gregory Ellwood
Editor-in-Chief, Co-Founder

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With over a decade of experience in the movie industry, Ellwood survived working for two major studios and has written for Variety, MSN and the LA Times. A co-founder of HitFix, Ellwood spends his time relaxing hitting 3’s on the basketball court and following his beloved Clippers.