Weekend Box Office: February 15 - 17

Courtesy of Box Office Mojo:

1.  A Good Day to Die Hard - $25 million

2.  Identity Thief - $23.4 million

3.  Safe Haven - $21.4 million

4.  Escape from Planet Earth - $16 million

5.  Warm Bodies - $9 million

6.  Beautiful Creatures - $7.4 million

7.  Side Effects - $6.3 million

8.  Silver Linings Playbook - $6 million

9.  Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters - $3.4 million

10.  Zero Dark Thirty - $3.1 million

The Die Hard series may just be phoning it in at this point, but Bruce Willis' fifth round as John McClane managed to do what what his action movie buddies Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone weren't so far this year:  open in first place.  Granted, the estimated $33 million A Good Day to Die Hard has earned since opening on Thursday isn't all that great, and Identity Thief may actually squeak back into first by tomorrow when the President's Day holiday weekend wraps up tomorrow, but it appears the series is still pretty popular.  In fact, it's very popular overseas, where it's already grossed $79 million.

In second place was Identity Thief, which dropped just 32% from its first-place finish last weekend.  The comedy has earned $70 million so far.  Safe Haven, the latest Nicholas Sparks adaptation, also opened on Thursday (it actually opened just ahead of Die Hard, Thursday being Valentine's Day and all), and finishes the weekend with $30.2 million.  Escape from Planet Earth didn't really register with families this weekend, earning a so-so $16 million.

Beautiful Creatures failed to catch the Twilight crowd, bottoming out this weekend with only $10 million since opening on Thursday.  That crowd seem more interested in Warm Bodies, which continues to do well, earning another $9 million.

Next weekend is the Oscars, which is good, since there's not a whole hell of a lot going on in theaters, other than the horror film Dark Skies, and the drug dealer-action thriller Snitch, starring Dwayne Johnson.  Oscar frontrunner Argo is due out on DVD this Tuesday, so it might be a good time to catch up on that instead.