The Weekend Report

Go Patriots … regardless of your opinion of American Sniper, Clint Eastwood’s late-career phenom once again led session viewing with an estimated $31.5 million box office. The frame saw three new national releases that did not compete with Super Bowl Sunday. “Found footage” time-travel yarn Project Almanac arrived with $8.4 million while the tale of custody and race Black or White grossed $6.4 million. The Loft, a second remake of a 2008 Belgian film by its original director, struggled to $2.8 million.

In the niches the finale of the season finale of “Game of Thrones” got super-sized to IMAX for a $1.5 million tally at 205 mega locations. The latest from Bollywood Hawaizaada misfired with $18,300 from 57 engagements while the Filipino sequel The Amazing Praybeyt Benjamin that recently became that country’s all-time box office grosser saw an impressive $202,000 tally. Also potent was the Chinese adventure Running Man with $207,000 debut. The annual collection of Oscar-nominated shorts program was off to a gallop with $363,000 total gross for its three separate programs.

Exclusive debuts included Mauritania’s Oscar hopeful, Timbuktu, with an impressive $44,500 from just four villages.

The frame also included major expansions for A Most Violent Year and Black Sea – neither evincing tremendous commercial strength.

Weekend revenues pushed to $105 million for a sharp 36% decline from seven days prior. But it was a decided 20% improvement from 2014 when the third weekend of Ride Along led with $12 million and the top freshman was That Awkward Moment with an $8.7 million bow.

It’s safe to say that the commercial phenomenon that is American Sniper has bolstered that film’s Oscar prospects by giving Academy voters a reason for reflection. Should it take home top honors it would be the first film since 1989 to win best picture whose director was not nominated.

With the Super Bbowl traditionally taking a bite out of session moviegoing, it provides distributors an opportunity to dump or counter-program their wares. Low-budget Project Almanac had initially been scheduled to open in 2014 and the current session afforded it the prospect of potentially a $12 million to $14 million debut according to industry tracking. Oh, well! Studio exit demos identified the audience as 55% male and 63% aged 25-years and younger.

Kevin Costner’s passion project Black or White landed as expected in projections of $5 million to $7 million. It skewed 64% female and appealed to an older crowd that was 78% aged 25-years and older. And in respect to black or white the split was 53% and 30% respectively.

The weekend anomaly was HBO’s decision to reconstitute last year’s season four finale of Game of Thrones (plus the opening five minutes of the forthcoming season) for the very, very large screen for a locked one-week engagement. While studio polling was unavailable it’s hard to imagine that a significant part of the audience was viewing the conclusion for the first time. The trial balloon in counter-program was an unqualified success and could pave the way for further experiments.

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