APEX Hollywood Shortlist: American Sniper Makes History (again!) as Birdman Feathers its Nest with Award Season Kudos
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- Strange Magic, Walt Disney Pictures
Making history yet again, Warner Brothers’ runaway smash American Sniper crossed the $200M mark at the box office over the weekend to become the second highest grossing war film in Hollywood history behind Steven Spielberg’s WWII epic Saving Private Ryan (DreamWorks), which topped out with $216M in 1998. Armed with six Oscar nominations and a rock steady perch at the top of the box office for the second weekend in a row with $64.6M, Sniper should easily surpass Ryan in the next few days to become the top grossing war film of all time.
Steaming up the windows in the second spot at the weekend box office was the Jennifer Lopez erotic thriller The Boy Next Door (Universal) which opened with $14.9M. Despite featuring a stellar cast of voice talents (including Tony winners Alan Cumming, and Kristen Chenoweth) and a story from the mind of George Lucas, the Force was not strong with Disney’s animated fable Strange Magic – opening in seventh place with $5.5M. Johnny Depp’s Mortdecai (Lionsgate) also struggled to finagle his way to the top of the office, opening in ninth place with a 4.2M haul.
And in a weekend that saw audiences seeking out smaller, Academy Award-nominated films in droves, Fox Searchlight’s Birdman soared to the top of the Oscar flock by scoring some major award season brass.
After trading trophies with IFC’s Boyhood for most of the season, Birdman jetted past Richard Linklater’s sentimental favorite to take top honors at the Producers Guild of America (PGA) awards on Saturday night and the award for Best Ensemble Cast at Sunday’s Screen Actors Guild (SAG) awards. To put these wins in perspective, the winner of the PGA’s top prize have gone on to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards in 18 of the past 25 years. And though the correlation between Best Ensemble Cast wins at the SAG awards and Best Picture winners at the Oscars is a less reliable indicator (winners have matched up only nine times in 19 years), Birdman’s guild victories will definitely improve their odds come Oscar time. And with the Directors and Writers guilds set to weigh in with their winners in the next two weeks, it really is anyone’s game this season.
Unless your name is J.K. Simmons. The Whiplash star has won every major award he’s been nominated for, so, seriously, just hand the dude an Oscar already.