APEX Hollywood Shortlist: “Sniper” and Sundance Sensation, “Dying Girl,” Shake Up Chilly Super Bowl Weekend
Share
- Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Fox Searchlight
With record snowfall across the country, a hotly contested Super Bowl on TV and the “Boston Yeti” live tweeting selfies in a furry white Yeti costume from the barren streets of Beantown – it’s a wonder that anyone got to a movie theatre over the weekend.
But come out they did and for the third, record-breaking weekend in a row, American Sniper (Warner Bros.) took the top spot at the box office with $31.85M in ticket sales. Closing in on the $250M mark, Sniper should shoot past The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies sometime this week to become the fifth top grossing film of 2014.
- Project Almanac, Paramount Pictures
Also opening wide over the weekend was Paramount and producer Michael Bay’s time-travel thriller Project Almanac, which took the third spot at the B.O. with $8.5M. The Kevin Costner top-lined interracial family drama Black or White (Relativity Media) came in at fourth place with $6.4M, but proved to be a solid performer with women and older audiences – which historically are not the first people in line on opening weekend – so, the film could find a larger, word-of-mouth audience in the coming weeks.
And proving that the box office isn’t big enough for more than one steamy, erotic thriller at a time, last week’s second-place finisher The Boy Next Door (Universal) slammed the door hard on Open Road’s The Loft in their first B.O. head-to-head. Adding another $6M to its $24.6M haul, The Boy Next Door sent The Loft’s tenants scurrying to a tenth place opening of $2.8M.
And though there’s no word yet as to what the Boston Yeti thought of it, the dark, indie comedy Me and Earl and the Dying Girl received an extended standing ovation, set off a bidding war, and took home the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award for US Dramatic Film at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival which concluded on Sunday night in Park City, Utah.
Snapped up by Fox Searchlight for a rumored $12M, Earl was helmed by veteran TV director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (American Horror Story, Glee) and adapted for the screen by Jesse Andrews from his 2013 novel of the same name. Already being described by breathless festival attendees as the “next Whiplash” (which took home the same honors at Sundance last year and is now nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture), expect to hear a lot more about Earl as Fox Searchlight eyes a release date later this year.