Top Film Industry Stories of 2015
#4: American Sniper

By Kim Hollis

January 21, 2016

But why didn't anyone watch Aloha or Burnt?

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When we left you with our Top Film Industry Stories at the end of 2014, the Sony hack was still fresh in our minds, global box office had transformed, and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 was the reigning domestic box office champion.

Oh, how quickly things can change.

It turns out that Mockingjay Part 1's record would fall, although none of us saw it coming. As 2014 came to a close, director Clint Eastwood's American Sniper was making some noise in limited release. During the four-day Christmas holiday, it tallied $873,667 from its four venues, giving it a remarkable location average during that time frame of $54,529. The following weekend, American Sniper actually increased - and it didn't change its venue count at all. From the Thursday New Year's Eve through Sunday, January 4th, it earned $889,989. Was this an indication that something special was about to happen? Perhaps it could have been, but it's not like we haven't seen other films perform spectacularly in limited release previously.

In fact, once the holidays wrapped up, American Sniper stayed on those four screens rather than expand to a few more theaters. Its behavior was pretty normal, as it declined 19% from its holiday inflated weekend. After 21 days at the box office, the film had earned $3.2 million and would go into the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend of January 16th with a big expansion. The film would move from its tiny four-venue plan to an ultra-wide 3,555 locations. Given the frenzy for the film in limited release and its just-announced Best Picture nomination at the Academy Awards, tracking was ready to call American Sniper a potential box office beast. Most forecasters were predicting a number in the $60 million range (for the entire Friday-to-Monday weekend), with Warner Bros. coming in more conservative at $55 million. BOP's Reagen Sulewski went even lower at $40 million.




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Needless to say, everyone was wrong. By a lot. American Sniper's first wide release weekend resulted in a Friday-to-Sunday total of $89.3 million and a Friday-through-Monday tally of $107.2 million. This was the biggest January debut ever, blowing away previous record holder Ride Along by $48 million. American Sniper more than doubled that record. It was Clint Eastwood's second biggest film ever - after only four days in wide release. And it would easily beat his biggest, Gran Torino, before the beginning of the following weekend.

Now, you may be thinking back to the beginning of this article, because it was there where we told you that The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 would not hold onto its title of biggest domestic earner of 2014. Because American Sniper technically opened in 2014, it is considered a release from that year even though its wide release didn't come until mid-January of 2015. It opened lower than Mockingjay Part 2, but it would certainly hold up better over the long run.

After that amazing, record-setting opening weekend, American Sniper's box office would decline only 27% in weekend two. If we don't count late May, when the film was only in a few screens and already released on home video, its biggest drop-off was 52% on January 30th. From that point until the weekend preceding its home video release, American Sniper's average decline was 27%. It chugged along with those magnificent holds all the way through the end of June, which ultimately allowed it to accumulate $350.1 million domestically - $13 million more than Mockingjay Part 1 and $17 million more than Guardians of the Galaxy.


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