Presidents Day weekend is feeling a little like Christmas at the box office, with studios getting the gifts: Five movies -- "Safe House," "The Vow," "Journey 2," "Ghost Rider 2" and "This Means War" -- closed the four-day weekend with more than $20 million each.
It's the first non-summer weekend with five movies grossing more than $20 million -- and the first such weekend at all since 2004.
Overall, the weekend is up 12 percent compared to the same weekend in 2011 -- the seventh week in a row that the box-office has outperformed last year's.
The top three movies of the weekend are holdovers that debuted last week. Universal's "Safe House" leads the pack, with a four-day total of $28.4 million. "The Vow," from Sony's Screen Gems and Spyglass Entertainment, is No. 2, with $26.6 million and "Journey 2: The Mysterious Island" is No. 3, with $26.4 million.
This weekend's new movies, Sony's "Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance," Fox's "This Means War" and Disney's "The Secret World of Arrietty" debuted at No. 4, No. 5 and No. 6.
"Spirit of Vengeance," which Sony says it made for $57 million, had particularly strong tracking going into the weekend, but while the film met the studio's expectations, it fell short of what some outside box-office watchers had predicted.
Critics did not like the PG-13 rated sequel to the 2007 "Ghost Rider," and the audience polling firm Cinemascore gave it an unimpressive "C+."
"We felt like we delivered for the 'Ghost Rider' fans and we are very much within our realm of expectations," Rory Bruer, Sony's distribution chief, told TheWrap Monday morning.
"Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance," financed with Hyde Park Entertainment, targeted men and superhero fans. Star Nicolas Cage supported the movie with an appearance on "Saturday Night Live" and talk shows including CBS's "Late Show With David Letterman," "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon," among others.
The movie played to young men. The audience was 61 percent male and 48 percent younger than 25.
Also read: Even Nicolas Cage Seems Restrained in Oddly Tame 'Ghost Rider' Sequel
While "Ghost Rider" missed some expectations outside the studio, Fox's "This Means War" handily beat projections.
Fox had figured the movie, which starred Reese Witherspoon, Chris Pine and Tom Hardy, would pull in $12 to $14 million over the weekend, and box-office watchers outside the studio were even more pessimistic.
But the movie, perhaps propelled by an "A-" Cinemascore, took $20.4 million over the four days.
"We were really balanced across the board, too," Chris Aronson, Fox's head of distribution, told TheWrap Monday morning. "Our top theater list goes from Los Angeles, Dallas, Oklahoma City, New York, Salt Lake City, Boston, D.C., Kansas City. It means it's resonating everywhere."
