Will ‘American Sniper’ Garner Half of Warner Bros. Q1 Ticket Sales?

“American Sniper” opened in wide release (3,555 screens) on Friday, and Box Office Mojo estimated that the film hauled in $105.3 million over the four-day weekend.

How big a deal is this? In the fourth quarter of 2014, Time Warner’s total revenues from theater box-office receipts (called “film rentals” in the 10-Q) dropped by $249 million year-over-year to $271 million. For the first nine-months of 2014, box office revenues fell 14%, from $1.473 billion in 2013 to $1.264, a total of $209 million.

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Of the 31 Warner Bros. movies that Box Office Mojo tracked in 2014, the average gross was around $50 million, for a total of $1.562 billion. (The studio released 22 movies last year.) The studio’s three highest grossing movies in 2014 were “The Lego Movie” with $257.8 million in receipts, followed by “Godzilla” with $200.7 million and “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies” with $189.5 million. Only 10 of the studio’s 31 movies grossed $50 million or more, and only five posted ticket sales of more than $100 million.

“American Sniper” could absolve a number of sins. Including foreign ticket sales, “American Sniper” has already pulled in $136.1 million and would already be Warner’s fourth-highest grossing movie in 2014. (The movie grossed just $1.33 million in its brief encounter with December 2014 audiences). With $136 million in the bank already, the studio is halfway to its third-quarter ticket sales total, and the first month of the first quarter is not behind us yet.

As a solid contender for Best Picture and Best Actor Oscars, “American Sniper” should easily top $200 million. If it wins either of the big ones (it is also nominated for four other Oscars) the box-office total could zoom. The last Warner Bros.-Clint Eastwood film to win an Oscar, “Million Dollar Baby,” earned $8.5 million prior to the Oscar nomination, $56 million after the nomination and nearly $36 million after winning. The award ceremony is scheduled for February 22, so there’s plenty of time for “American Sniper” to pad the studio’s bottom line.

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