With an estimated $30.5 million on Friday, the Oscar-nominated, controversial film is already director Clint Eastwood’s best-ever box office debut.
Kyle Gallner and Bradley Cooper in American Sniper
Warner Bros.
American Sniper has been playing in wide release for just one day, and it's already broken a major box office record. With an estimated $30.5 million on Friday and late Thursday night at the domestic box office, the film is now the best wide-release box office opening of Clint Eastwood's 44-year directorial career — in raw dollars, and adjusting for ticket price inflation.
And at this rate, the film — based on an autobiography of same name by the late Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, who was credited as the deadliest sniper in American military history — is just starting its record-breaking box office run. When the dust settles at the end of the four-day Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, American Sniper stands to make anywhere between $80 million to $100 million.
That is simply unheard of in January. Adjusting for inflation, the best ever MLK weekend debut is 2008's Cloverfield, with $51.9 million over four days. The best ever January debut is the Special Edition re-release of Star Wars in 1997, which opened with $63.2 million in 2015 dollars. Sniper could blast past both of those records on Saturday.
Bradley Cooper in American Sniper
Warner Bros.
Sniper has already made a significant impact playing in just four theaters since Dec. 25, where it's made $3.4 million, with astronomic per-theater weekend averages ranging from $158,000 to $169,000.
But in that time, the film has also already weathered significant controversy after it came under criticism for its depiction of Kyle — who made no effort in his book to hide his disdain for Iraqis, referring to them as "savages," nor his belief that his mandate during his service in Iraq was to "[k]ill every male you see" — as an unqualified hero. Critics of the film subsequently reported receiving death threats. On Wednesday, Cooper defended the film, telling The Daily Beast , "[T]his movie was always a character study about what the plight is for a soldier. … It doesn't go any farther than that. It's not a political discussion about war, even. It's a discussion about the reality. And the reality is that people are coming home, and we have to take care of them."
Meanwhile, on Thursday, Sniper earned six Academy Award nominations, including for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor for Bradley Cooper's performance as Kyle. And it just earned a rare "A+" rating from CinemaScore, indicating that word-of-mouth will be a powerful factor in the film's box office longevity.
This story will be updated through the weekend.
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