Anna Daniels
For decades, our movie-going diets have been fattened by sequels, reboots, and remakes. Given this moviegoing landscape, American Sniper was a milestone in 2014. It was the first movie since Avatar that wasn’t based on a pre-existing property to top the domestic box office (unless you count the fact it was based on a true story), and the only movie this century to do so that wasn’t a big-budget, CG-infused blockbuster. This achievement is even more impressive because the movie was also rated R.
That said, American Sniper’s status as “2014’s biggest movie” is a bit of a misnomer, as it made most of its money in 2015. It first opened in limited release in December 2014, making a little more than $633,000 in just four theaters. It opened wide in January 2015 with an incredible $92 million, and continued to leg it out to a $350 million domestic haul. While American Sniper was the #1 hit domestically, its total worldwide take (a still very impressive $547 million), didn’t even secure it a spot in the top ten. The year’s biggest worldwide hit was, not surprisingly, a franchise picture — Transformers: Age of Extinction. The fourth film in the Transformers series made a so-so (for Transformers) $245 million domestically, but was big business overseas, with a total worldwide take of just a little more than $1.1 billion. American Sniper was an historic achievement stateside, but worldwide Chris Kyle couldn’t top the bots.
Written by: Looper
