Super Bowl weekend is traditionally a difficult one for the box office. And with a record 114.5 Americans glued to their TV sets to watch the last minute victory of the New England Patriots over the Seattle Seahawks, this was a particularly challenging one. But American Sniper kept marching on, collecting another $30 million on its third weekend of wide release. And even if it missed the goal of being the largest grossing movie on a Super Bowl weekend, an honor still held since 2008 by Disney’s Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus Concert Tour, the Clint Eastwood directed film keeps confusing Warner Brothers and competing distributors alike. Its domestic total stands now at $250 million, which means it has already climbed beyond Saving Private Ryan’s $216 million to become the highest grossing war movie of all times at the U.S. box office. The biopic is now projected to end its North American run in the $325 to $350 million range and what this means is that it may pass the haul of Guardians of the Galaxy ($333million) and of Hunger Games: Part I ($335 million). It keeps piling up money also overseas. Sniper added another $11 million this week for an international gross so far of about $70 million.
 
American Sniper has also been instrumental in helping the industry as a whole with an auspicious start for 2015: Total box office is already beyond the $1 billion mark, and 9% ahead of last year. Second place this weekend went to Project Almanac, about a group of teenagers and their attempt to discover time travel: it made $8.3 million; a disappointing figure but the film cost just $12 million. By a thread, third place went to Paddington, with $8.25 million and still holding relatively strong after 3 weeks: the projections show the film ending its American run at about $70 million. Behind Paddington, we see Black or White, a racial drama with Kevin Costner and Octavia Spencer engaged in a bitter child custody fight. The author of Dances with Wolves needs to be commended for investing his own money into the project, but with an opening of $6.2 million and with an audience mostly older (78% over 25 years old) and female (64%) his appeal is obviously dwindling. It will be tested again next month, when Costner will be starring in McFarland USA. Completing the top 5 is The Boy Next Door, with Jennifer Lopez getting in trouble because of a much younger neighbor (Ryan Guzman). It added $6 million in its second weekend and it now stands at a total of close to $25 million. In its second week, Johnny Depp’s Mortdecai continued its slide into the red: it added just $1.4 million, for an embarrassing total of $6.8 million. Things were not good for Jude Law either: Black Sea, his submarine thriller, earned below half a million dollars. Compared to those numbers Game of Thrones was a big success as HBO decided to play the final episodes of season 4 and a 5-minute sneak peak of season 5 on Imax platforms. In just 205 theaters, they earned almost $ 1.5 million.
 
Moving abroad, and specifically to China, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies added $43 million and after 10 days is now at $92.9 million. Its global total is at $915 million and reaching the $1 billion mark is no longer a matter of if, but when. Second place went to Running Man, adapted from a reality show, with $35 million. Still in the Middle Kingdom, and after 29 days of release, Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb is now over $51 million and its global total is a very respectable $314 million, two-thirds of which generated overseas. Taken 3, in the meantime, opened in several Latin markets and it now stands at $245 million globally.
 
Next weekend we will probably witness American Sniper leaving the number one spot. The production projected to take its place is Paramount’s The Sponge Bob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water, but the Wachowskis’ Jupiter Ascending could also be a contender. And then there is Universal’s Seventh Son, a supernatural fantasy starring Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore.
Lorenzo Soria