Audiences spent Valentine's Day at Wuthering Heights

Cathy and Heathcliff opened strong (and so did Nirvanna The Band), as word of mouth continues to send audiences to Send Help. 

By Matt Schimkowitz  |  February 16, 2026 | 9:25pm
Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
Film News Box Office
Audiences spent Valentine's Day at Wuthering Heights

The movies continue to uphold their reputations as romantic mood-setters and always-reliable babysitters this week. For this very special Valentine’s and President’s Day weekend, the love was spread across the three new releases from major studios, but the specialty box office also had a surprise overperformance, with Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie, which overcame the hurdle of convincing people to see a movie based on two underseen Canadian shows. Marking the ninth consecutive number one for Warner Bros., the much-discussed, loosely adapted, and already divisive Charlotte Brontë rework, Wuthering Heights ripped bodices and upset BookTok to the tune of $32.8 million over three days, per The Numbers. With an additional $45 million in international receipts, Wuthering Heights is already writer-director Emerald Fennell’s most successful outing at $83 million, but it is still a little behind projections, which isn’t great for a movie getting mixed reviews from critics and audiences alike. 

Not far behind was another new release, GOAT, the Steph Curry-produced basketball-playing goat movie. Dribbling with inventive animation from the folks behind Spider-Verse, and a voice cast that includes cartoon basketball movie legend Wayne Knight, as well as Stranger Things‘ Caleb McLaughlin, Gabrielle Union, and Aaron Pierre, GOAT took in $27.2 million over the weekend. It was the strongest start for a non-sequel animated movie since 2023’s Elemental. 

Landing at number three was Amazon MGM’s stab at a crowd-pleasing re-Heated crime thriller for adults: Crime 101. The movie exceeded modest expectations, bringing in $15 million (The Numbers predicted $7.2 million). Still, the movie’s $90 million price tag will likely prevent it from becoming profitable without some very creative Hollywood accounting. Sadly, another new release, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, director Gore Verbinski’s first movie in nearly a decade, is performing worse than his last, A Cure For Wellness. The movie brought in $3.6 million from 1,610 theaters. 

The most interesting part of this week’s box office is Send Help, which dropped a slight 3% from last week. With another $8.8 million, the movie’s word-of-mouth is helping keep things consistent at the box office, where it has made a tidy $47 million thus far. Also worth noting is the overperformance of Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie. Arriving in just 365 theaters and carrying the albatross of source material most are unfamiliar, Nirvanna The Band scored $1.2 million, skydiving to number 12. It is currently the largest-ever opening for an English Canadian movie since director, co-writer, and star Matt Johnson’s last effort, BlackBerry, which is about the vampires of Waterloo. That settles it: you definitely do not need to see The Show before seeing The Show The Movie. 

Here’s the top 10:

  1. 1) Wuthering Heights ($32.8 million) 
  2. 2) GOAT ($27. 2 million) 
  3. 3) Crime 101 ($14 million) 
  4. 4) Send Help ($8.8 million) 
  5. 5) Solo Mio ($6.5 million) 
  6. 6) Zootopia 2 ($3.7 million) 
  7. 7) Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die ($3.6 million) 
  8. 8) Avatar: Fire & Ash ($3.4 million) 
  9. 9) Iron Lung ($3.3 million) 
  10. 10) Dracula ($3 million)

 

 
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