Hollywood Strikes Out on Valentine’s Day?
No New Rom-Coms Greet Most Romantic Day on the Calendar
Some things never go out of style.
- Tuxedoes
- Flowers on a first date
- Romantic movies for budding couples
Hollywood has a golden opportunity to help on the latter front. Or, should we say had?
A quick look at the film release calendar for Feb. 14, 2025 shows the industry forgot Saint Valentine.
Valentine’s Day weekend debuts “Captain America: Brave New World,” a film seemingly devoid of meet-cute moments or airport reunions. We’ll also see “Paddington in Peru,” the third film in a saga known for its family-friendly yuks.
Two major releases. Zero attempts to woo romantic movie goers.
The indie film “When I’m Ready” (opening Feb. 7 but expanding to VOD Feb. 14) hints at a complicated kind of love. The story follows a couple striving to find meaning on what could be the last days of Earth.
Fun date movie, no?
The weekend’s main holdovers are anti-romances. “Love Hurts” is a groaner of an action comedy about a former assassin (Ke Huy Quan) lured back into the business to defend an old flame (Ariana DeBose). You really have to squint to find the love angle here, and the stars have zero chemistry.
And then there’s “Heart Eyes.” The horror comedy follows a killer who stalks lovers on Valentine’s Day. The film has the holiday in mind, at least. Its grisly slayings aren’t catnip for the typical lovestruck couple.
Why miss a huge marketing opportunity with new Valentine’s Day movies? It’s complicated.
RELATED: HOW THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION KILLED THE ROM COM
Yes, the rom-com marketplace has struggled over the past decade. Some romances head straight to video or streaming. Others just aren’t being made, and the duds help explain why.
“Fly Me to the Moon,” a star-studded affair with a bloated budget, earned just $20 million last year.
We have seen some popular exceptions.
The 2022 charmer “Ticket to Paradise” with Julia Roberts and George Clooney earned $68 million domestically (and $100 million more from international theaters). Last year’s “Anyone But You” opened modestly but ended its theatrical run with an impressive $88 million US dollars.
There is one new rom-com available this weekend, but you won’t find it in any theater.
The fourth film in the “Bridget Jones’ Diary” series debuts exclusively on Peacock Feb. 13. “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” stars Renée Zellweger as the title character, now a widowed mom looking for a new chapter in life.
The last film in the saga, “Bridget Jones’s’ Baby,” earned a tepid $24 million at the US box office in 2016. That explains the film’s straight-to-streaming trajectory.
How do you explain Hollywood ignoring lovers on Valentine’s Day 2025?
I love movies! I watch all kinds of movies – action, thrillers, rom-coms, and even “stupid movies”! My tastes run from “As Good As It Get’s”, “Jason Bourne”, any OLD movie with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. or Cary Grant or Joel McCrea and many others all the was to “Naked Nuns With Big Guns”! BUT, I hesitate to consider anything made in 2022 to now! I did TRY to watch the new Will Ferrell movie and barely made it past the totally stupid scene where his Daughter came home – who thought that crap was entertaining? Oh yeah, some young nitwit!
As far as going to a theatre to watch a movie? I’ll pass and obviously so do many others! Why pay to have liberal bs thrown in your face when you can just watch CSPAN? No thanks!
Hollywood needs to wake up from being “woke” and begin making movies that are not liberal propaganda!
Oh yeah – Valentines Day! Libers have killed that one too! Innocent romance has been taken over by the vulgar left to include so many degenerate ideologies that not just SHUN, but seek to pervert NORMAL MAN and WOMAN or BOY and GIRL relationships. I’ve often posted “LEAVE THE KIDS ALONE”! If the left would get out of the bathrooms and let children BE children and grow up and have the kind of “innocent romance” that they need to form healthy relationships the WORLD would be a much better place! I look back on my teenage years and long for that “innocent romance”. At least I have my memories!
If you don’t understand love, it will be difficult to create a movie about it. And if you don’t see a man and a woman as the basis of a family, you’re not going to have the interest or the ability to create a compelling story that reflects the fundamental building blocks of civilization. Sad state of affairs.
Theaters will never reach the popularity they once had again. Too high ticket prices, fast turnarounds to the streaming services and genre burnout (Superhero and Disney live action remakes ) are just not worth it anymore.
Between Show Biz’s preternatural leftism and then the rise of streaming services and Netflix to COVID, Wokism gone nuts and now the LA fires, the industry as it was is drawing its last breath.