http://deadline.com/2015/01/weekend-box-office-american-sniper-kevin-hart-the-wedding-ringer-paddington-blackhat-martin-luther-king-jr-1201349929/by Anthony D'Alessandro
January 17, 2015 2:21am
UPDATE, 2:04AM Saturday: American Sniper is huge. So huge that the Clint Eastwood-directed film could, by sunrise, make more in one day than any one of his films ever made in a weekend. Per late night industry estimates, the Warner Bros./Village Roadshow pic looks to gun down $29.1M in its first expanded Friday, within inches of blowing away Eastwood’s previous weekend high, 2009’s Gran Torino at $29.5M. Hands down, American Sniper’s Friday booty ranks as the highest grossing day ever charted by a film in January – and that goes for an opening (previous record holder was 2008’s Cloverfield at $17.16M) and single day (prior was the $25.8M B.O. racked up by Avatar on Jan. 2, 2010).
Whenever weekend B.O. projections are made from Friday noon matinees, they tend to be significantly off come night time. But tonight, the industry continues to just project higher and higher weekend openings for American Sniper as east and west coast theaters close [float=right]
[/float]out their tills. Insiders see a tentpole trajectory for American Sniper throughout the weekend, with the bulk of the weekend’s B.O. being front-loaded tonight. Taking into consideration Sunday’s two NFL playoff games, which are apt to steal guys away, American Sniper could lower its guns by close to 30%-40% from its Saturday gross. As of tonight, the outlook for the Eastwood film is $66.8M over three-days and $75.4M over four – easily surpassing the previous January and MLK weekend holiday record set by last year’s Ride Along which made $41.5M and $48.6M respectively over the three and four-days. In sum, American Sniper is an amazing feat for Warner Bros. On the surface, the film appeared risky with its anti-war message. In a grand gesture, Eastwood premiered the film at AFI on Veterans Day. Ask distribution folks why the film is an anomaly at the B.O., and they cite a perfect storm of reasons: Bradley Cooper’s star power, the NY Times bestseller status of Chris Kyle’s memoir, the film’s A+ Cinemascore as well as its awards season traction which counts six Oscar noms including best picture and best actor Cooper. While there’s definitely a groundswell of support from the military sector for American Sniper – the film screened extensively at military bases, some of which Cooper visited, not to mention the outreach to veteran groups — distrib insiders observe that American Sniper is playing strong everywhere; not just the red states. Warner Bros. led with an upscale campaign for the Eastwood film, opening it on Christmas day in four New York and LA theaters where it has hit a number of screen average highs.
Screenwriter Jason Hall met with former Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle prior to the publication of his autobiography. Hall saw the project through several drafts, particularly in the wake of Kyle’s sudden murder. Originally Steven Spielberg was attached to direct with Cooper headlining, but the Lincoln director dropped out in August 2013. A few weeks later, Eastwood boarded the project.
