Blowing past all reasonable predictions, Clint Eastwood’s
American Sniper, which stars
Bradley Cooper as the most prolific sniper in US military history, crushed the January record books with a scorching $90.2 million Friday-to-Sunday and an estimated $105 million Friday-to-Monday debut frame. To wit, that bests the previous January record (
Ride Along with $41m/$48m on the same weekend last year) while becoming the second-biggest R-rated debut of all-time behind only
The Matrix Reloaded ($91m). It is the biggest debut weekend for a Best Picture Oscar nominee ever. The previous opening weekend for a Clint Eastwood movie was
Gran Torino, which debuted with $29.5m back in 2008. This one bested that in a day, and is nearly 2/3 of the way (around $108m as of Monday) to besting the $148m domestic total of said Eastwood picture to claim the top grosser spot of his legendary career.
The Bradley Cooper vehicle went wide this weekend after scorching four-theater per-screen-averages of over $100k p.s.a. for three weekends of limited release starting on Christmas Day where it earned $3 million going into the weekend. It earned six Oscar nominations on Thursday, including Best Picture and a Best Actor nod for Bradley Cooper. The dynamite first teaser ranks among the best such spots from last year, and Warner Bros. knew it didn’t have to do much more that drop that harrowing tease. The Warner Bros./
Time Warner TWX +0.92% Inc. release even made it seem like even more of an event via asking IMAX to do a lightning-quick conversion for this weekend’s wide release. For the record, I, along with $9,5m worth of moviegoers, saw the film in IMAX over the weekend and it looked superb. But we’ll discuss that after all the dust has settled. If you count
American Sniper as a straight drama, it’s the biggest opening weekend for a straight drama ahead of
The Passion of the Christ ($83m). By the way, that $90.2m weekend is a rock-solid 3.x weekend multiplier. Oh, and it’s the 39th biggest weekend ever and the eighth-biggest debut ever for an explicit non-sequel/prequel.
If you count it as an action film, and for the record I do, it’s one of the biggest debuts ever for a “real world” non-comic book/sci-fi/fantasy action picture, behind just
Fast & Furious 6 ($97.3m) and ahead of the likes of
Skyfall ($88.3m), and
Fast Five ($86.1m). Okay, if you want to count the mostly “real world”
Indiana Jones pictures (they tend to go religious/fantasy right at the very end), then you add in
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull with its $100m Fri-Sun debut. There has been a lot of talk over the last few years about opening would-be event pictures outside of the conventional blockbuster season. Here is another prime example of how, to paraphrase Anton Ego, not every movie can become a blockbuster; but a blockbuster can come from anywhere.
