Movie Preview: February 2025

Preview of 2025 completed. Favorite movies of 2024 revealed. Now it’s time to dive right into February to see the prognosis on what the second month of the year has to offer! As talked about in my January preview, the first month of the year was a trifecta of holiday holdovers, awards season expansions, and new January releases that are often dumped onto the calendar and ignored. The fact that “Mufasa” was either No. 1 or fighting for No. 1 in four of the five January weekends should tell you about how all of that went. Most of the new January releases didn’t do much. Our first breakout hit of the year was “Dog Man,” which opened on the final day of January to $36 million. As a reminder, even though two of those three days of that weekend were in February, I include the weekend in the month where it started, which is why we begin this post now instead of last week at this time. Anyways, February has our first Marvel movie of the year, which should give the month and the year a nice kick of adrenaline. Teaming up with the Captain are a plethora of smaller to medium-sized films that look to please audiences while crossing their fingers in hopes that they get a few dollars themselves.

As always, release date information for this post is courtesy of the-numbers.com and boxofficepro.com. The movies listed are the ones currently scheduled for a wide release in the United States and Canada and are always subject to change.

February 7 – 9

Universal's "Love Hurts" 

As mentioned in the intro, the final weekend of January saw “Dog Man” open to $36 million, which was an almost identical opening as the most recent DreamWorks movie, “The Wild Robot,” which opened to $35.8 million back in the end of September. “The Wild Robot” dropped 47 percent in its second weekend. If “Dog Man” follows suit, that would put it right around $19.1 million for weekend No. 2, which should give it plenty of clearance to take a second straight weekend at No. 1. The biggest competition is… the Super Bowl. Not a theatrical event, obviously, but it needs to be noted because Super Bowl weekend has never been a great one for the box office, as movies that do come out only have two days instead of three, unless you can successfully counter-program. Even then, very few new movies have opened higher than $20 million. Seven, to be exact. And the highest of them all was the Hanna Montana and Miley Cyrus concert movie way back in 2008, which opened to $31.1 million. In which case, “Dog Man” is poised to counter-program the best, with it being a movie directed at kids. Two new movies will attempt to open against the Super Bowl this weekend, but one is an action and the other is a horror movie, so prognostication is not the best. But lets check them out, anyways!

Theoretically tracking slightly ahead in regards to the two new releases is the Valentine’s action movie Love Hurts. This movie stars Oscar-winning actor Ke Huy Quan, who has now arrived at the point in his career where he gets to headline his own action movie after beginning his career as the kid Short Round in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.” And he’s teaming up with Oscar-winning actress Ariana DeBose, who, having won her Oscar the year before, was the one on Oscar night to announce Key Huy Quan as the winner for supporting actor. Anyways, I haven’t quite been able to discern what their relationship in the movie is from the trailers or description, but they’re teaming to stop his brother, a crime lord who is out for revenge. And yes, this is another action movie where a middle-aged man has attempted to put his past life behind him, only to get dragged back into that life when others try to hunt him down. I’ll let you figure out what other action movies are like that. Box Office Pro has this pegged to open in the $8-12 million. My gut tells me that could be a tad bit optimistic, but I’m not a professional at this. Maybe a Valentine’s action film should’ve opened on Valentine’s weekend instead of Super Bowl. But that weekend has a giant Marvel movie opening, so it’s a bit of a lose/lose here. Reviews have not been released as of me typing this, so that’s also a little bit of a red flag, but we’ll see if it can overcome the hurdles that are presented here.

The horror movie that’s getting released on this weekend is also Valentine’s themed and that is Heart Eyes, which is a movie that seems to be combining rom-com with slasher flick as the “Heart Eyes Killer” is out wreaking havoc and stalking couples on Valentine’s Day. This gives the holiday its very own slasher horror villain alongside the likes of Halloween and Thanksgiving, amongst a few others. This movie is directed by Josh Ruben, director of the 2021 horror comedy “Werewolves Within,” and is written by Christopher Landon and Michael Kennedy. Landon is the writer/director of “Happy Death Day” and “Freaky,” while Kennedy teamed up with Landon to help write “Freaky,” while also writing “It’s a Wonderful Knife.” Landon has his own movie “Drop” coming in April, so he’s been busy. But together as a team, they’ve all conjured up a Valentine’s Day horror film that has seem to have gone over quite well with those who have seen in. Reviews are out and it’s hovering around 90 percent. Copy and paste the same obstacles “Love Hurts” has with the Super Bowl this week and Captain America next week, while adding the fact that “Heart Eyes” has to deal with competition from “Companion” last week, which didn’t open high, but got excellent reviews, as well as “The Monkey,” which releases on February 21 and also has great early reviews. So it’s an excellent month for horror fans, but this might be a case of horror fans having to catch up on the movie over the course of the year if things are a bit too busy for it to break out in this particular moment.

February 14 – 17

Marvel's "Captain America: Brave New World"

It’s a double holiday weekend as Valentine’s Day lands on a Friday this year, with Presidents’ Day being the following Monday. That often leads to a very productive four-day holiday weekend when things align like that. And it’s Marvel that has laid claim on the weekend as they release the big blockbuster of the month, Captain America: Brave New World. This is the first of three MCU films being released this year, with “Thunderbolts*” in May and “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” in July being the other two. And the subtitle of this particular movie is coincidentally a bit like Marvel’s story at the moment. In past years following the success of “The Avengers,” the spent a good portion of the decade being invincible. And now we’ve entered a phase where public perception isn’t quite what it once was, as hating on the MCU is the cool thing to do right now. So instead of being this invincible force that can do no wrong, Marvel now has to try to win audiences back over. And after mostly taking 2024 off due to the strikes in 2023 impacting the production of several of their movies, leaving “Deadpool & Wolverine” as their lone 2024 release, Sam Wilson is the one who gets to lead the charge in 2025. As you’ll of course recall, he took the shield and the mantle of Captain America from Steve Rodgers at the end of “Avengers: Endgame.” Then in 2021 we had the Disney+ series “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” tell his story of him officially accepting that role. With that transition out of the way, he now gets his own movie as he has Harrison Ford’s Red Hulk and Giancarlo Esposito’s Sidewinder to deal with.

Will he successfully lead his own movie to box office success and win over audiences? That’s the unknown territory here that we’re all here to find out. Box Office Pro’s most recent tracking has it pegged in the $80-95 million range for the 3-day weekend, with $90-105 million for the 4-day weekend. In looking at the previous three Captain America movies, “The First Avenger” opened to $65.1 million in 2011, while “The Winter Soldier” opened to $95.0 million three years later in 2014. “Civil War” is not a good comparison at all due to it being a quasi-Avengers movie and performing like one, but if you use the tool provided by the-numbers.com and adjust for ticket price inflation, those first two movies adjust to $88.4 million and $125.4 million for their openings, respectively. Now despite criticism being heavy from audiences, Marvel actually had a six-movie streak of $100+ million openers, from “Spider-Man: No Way Home” in December 2021 to “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” in May 2023, before the world collapsed on “The Marvels” in late 2023. But “Deadpool & Wolverine” recovered quite nicely last year with a $211.4 million opening. So people complain… but they still go. All things considered, Box Office Pro’s range is probably a fair number, which would put it in the company of several other solo MCU adventures. Reviews and audience reaction will be especially key here, while the 4-day holiday weekend has to be taken into consideration. The 3-day total might be a tad bit lower as the opening is stretched over the four days. And not many MCU movies have opened over a 4-day holiday weekend, so there’s not a ton of comparison there.

Captain America does have competition this holiday weekend as we finally have the U.S. release of Paddington in Peru. As was the case with both previous Paddington movies, this third movie also opened in its home country of the U.K. back at the end of last year before finally arriving over here in America. It’s already earned $44.9 million over there and $93.2 million total worldwide, so perhaps its U.S. release is less important, but nevertheless the Paddington movies have received quite the prestige, especially “Paddington 2,” which was at 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes for quite the long time. At one point it held the record for most reviews counted for a movie that was 100 percent before a couple of Grinches knocked it down to 99 percent… several years after the fact. The spurned a silly conversation of comparing to “Citizen Kane” as the best reviewed movie ever. That shows a lack of understanding as to how Rotten Tomatoes works. Not many critics are actually calling it the best movie ever. But the short version of what that high score means is that it’s a movie that’s hard to hate. Which seems to hold true for “Paddington in Peru” so far. It hasn’t had rave reviews in comparison, but it still stands at a 93 percent with 70 reviews counted as of me typing this post. The slight concern is that the director of the first two didn’t return for this one, but so far it seems new director Dougal Wilson took enough notes from Paul King to make this work from audiences. All that said, these movies don’t necessarily open super high in America. “Paddington” opened to $18.9 million here in 2015, while “Paddington 2” only opened to $11.0 million. So somewhere in the $15-20 million range is more or less what’s expected. As the title explains, Paddington bear is off to Peru in this movie to search for his Aunt Lucy, who he learns has gone missing.

February 21 – 23

NEON's "The Monkey"

Regardless of how Captain America does in its opening weekend, barring a monumental disaster, it is almost certain to take a second weekend at No. 1. But looking for a strong second place debut is the horror movie The Monkey. This comes from director Osgood Perkins, son of “Psycho” star Anthony Perkins, fresh off his breakout success with last year’s “Longlegs,” which was a serial killer horror film where the FBI was trying to hunt down a Satanic serial killer played by Nicolas Cage. Although in the same genre, “The Monkey” is a much different type of horror film as its basically a slasher horror about a toy monkey going around killing people. The movie is based on a short story written by Stephen King back in 1980 and also has James Wan on as producer. So the combination of Osgood Perkins, Stephen King, and James Wan certainly makes this a horror film that has breakout potential. Last year “Longlegs” opened with an impressive $22.4 million and held well to make $74.3 million domestically. Those are numbers that aren’t out of the realm of possibility here, especially since early reaction has been strong so far as it’s earned an 88 percent from its first 26 reviews counted. Box Office Pro pegged it in the broad range of $15-25 million, which is not particularly helpful, but it seems like it’s possible that it hits the top end of that spectrum, finishing off what should be a fun month for horror fans.

The other movie coming out this weekend is one that might seem vaguely familiar and that’s because The Unbreakable Boy was initially scheduled to come in March 2022. Filming took place in late 2020 and the movie was ready for its 2022 release date, but was pulled from the schedule eight days before its release by Lionsgate without much of any explanation. It spent two years sitting on a shelf being updated before it finally got its current release date around this time last year. So now more than four years after initially being shot, the movie is finally ready to hit theaters. The movie is written and directed by Jon Gunn and is about a boy on the autism spectrum who also has brittle bone disease. Zachary Levi plays the boy’s father Scott and the movie is more or less told from the father’s vantage point as he initially struggles with his son’s condition only to learn later what it means to be truly unbreakable, finding joy and gratitude in the most trying times. The movie is based on a true story and is adapted from the book that was written by the kid’s father. Director Jon Gunn latest movie, “Ordinary Angels,” was released last year in February and opened to $6.2 million. He also directed “Do You Believe?” and “The Case for Christ,” which opened to $3.6 million and $3.9 million, respectively, in 2015 and 2017. So a similar opening in the realm of $5-10 million is the expectation here.

February 28 – March 2

Focus Features' "Last Breath"

The final weekend of February, which includes the first two days of March, is looking like a bit of a quiet one, which should lead the way for a Captain America three-peat. There were initially three smaller releases scheduled for this final weekend, but literally in the middle of me typing this, the new Looney Tunes movie got pushed back a few weeks to March 14, so we’ll talk about the Looney Tunes next month. That’s why I always note that these release dates are subject to change. But that leaves us with the movie Last Breath as the first of just two movies to talk about here. This movie is a dramatized version of the 2019 documentary of the same name that tells the story of a diving accident back in 2012 where diver Chris Lemons and his two colleagues were carrying out repairs 300 feet below the surface of the North American Sea when their diving equipment failed. Lemons was dragged and trapped with only five minutes left of breathable gas in is tank. The documentary is currently available to be watched on Netflix, although when I searched it I learned that Netflix claims it’s leaving on February 14, so you have about a week to watch it before it leaves prior to the movie’s release. The documentary was directed by Richard da Costa and Alex Parkinson, and also written by Alex Parkinson. The movie stars Woody Harrelson, Simu Liu, and Finn Cole. It also has Alex Parkinson back as the writer and director of this dramatized version, which is slightly unique, but not completely unheard of, to adapt your own documentary into a dramatized film.

The final movie of the weekend and the month, as I quickly refresh to see if there are any more release schedule changes since I started typing, is the anime film Mobile Gundam GQuuuuuuX -Beginning-. I’m pretty sure I got the correct amount of u’s on that. I’m not sure how you’d pronounce that, which makes me glad I’m only typing this. It is apparently being billed as the sixteenth installment of the Gundam franchise. Although I’m not quite sure where they get that number because I click on the Gundam Wikipedia page and it says it’s a franchise that began in 1979 and has spawned 50 TV series, films, and OVAs, as well as manga, novels, and video games. So regardless of the number, this franchise is huge. And popular. “Mobile Gundam GQuuuuuuX” is an upcoming anime series, while “Mobile Gundam GQuuuuuuX -Beginning-” appears to be a theatrical cut of several of the episodes. Doing this type of thing for anime series has been fairly popular and trendy as of late, either releasing the first few episodes of an upcoming series as a movie, editing a season of a show into a movie, or some other variation of this. The most recent was “Solo Leveling -ReAwakening-,” which opened to $2.5 million from 846 theaters, while in October “My Hero Academia the Movie: You’re Next” opened to $3.0 million from 1,845 theaters. “Mobile Gundam GQuuuuuuX -Beginning-” is being being distributed by GKIDS and will likely open somewhere around those numbers, depending on what the final theater count ends up being.