Date: 6th February 2001

Valentine With An Arrow


The slasher movie Valentine came within striking distance of debuting in first place at the box office last weekend.

The Warner Bros. movie earned $10 million, just behind the $10.6 million taken in by Sony/Columbia's The Wedding Planner. Twentieth Century Fox's Cast Away, starring Tom Hanks, was in third place with $7.5 million, to bring its gross past the $200-million mark to $203 million after seven weeks.

Paramount's Save the Last Dance fell to fourth place from second with $7.2 million, while Sony Pictures Classics' Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon moved up to fifth with $6.8 million. (The Chinese-language film has now grossed $53 million after nine weeks and should pass the record for a foreign-language film of $56 million set in 1999 by Life Is Beautiful. In an interview with the Associated Press, Exhibitor Relations chief Paul Dergarabedian remarked, "It's really unprecedented for a film like Crouching Tiger to do this kind of business. ... It's an arthouse movie with subtitles, but it has a lot of really intense action, a really unique visual style. It's an action picture but with a love story and strong female characters, so there's crossover appeal to women.")

Source: Studio Briefing