Crushing its competition, American Sniper was the number one movie in America for the second weekend in a row. Clint Eastwood’s film brought in over $64 million gross, beating out the second-highest grossing film of the weekend by wide margin.
Taking second place The Boy Next Door, starring Jennifer Lopez. The film grossed just over $15 million, putting it well over $49 million behind Sniper.
While this represents a 27.9% drop in gross proceeds for American Sniper from the previous weekend, this is actually the smallest decrease in sales for any film that opened with earnings of over $85 million (the film grossed over $89 million in its opening weekend).
The film is riding a boost from its Academy awards nominations. And it is on pace to becoming the highest-earning war film of all time. It is likely to beat out 1998’s Saving Private Ryan, even adjusting for inflation.
In its domestic opening, Johnny Depp’s Mortdecai didn’t fare so well. The film debuted in ninth place, bringing in just over $4 million. This marks yet another poor performance for a Depp film and is becoming somewhat of a trend.
The top ten grossing films of the weekend below:
| American Sniper | $64,365,000 |
| The Boy Next Door | $15,001,000 |
| Paddington | $12,391,000 |
| The Wedding Ringer | $11,600,000 |
| Taken 3 | $7,600,000 |
| The Imitation Game | $7,136,000 |
| Strange Magic | $5,534,000 |
| Selma | $5,500,000 |
| Mortdecai | $4,125,000 |
| Into the Woods | $3,886,000 |