American Sniper is on course to become the highest grossing film to be released in the US in 2014, according to analysts Boxoffice.com.
The film it needs to overhaul is The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1, whose total stands at $335.7m (£220.4m) since its US release on 21 November. Sniper, which was released on Christmas day, currently stands at $281.4m, and is projected to finish with around $360m.
Dan Fellman, Warner Bros’ head of domestic distribution, told Variety he was taking nothing for granted. “We’ll take it one week at a time,” he said. “But it’s certainly moving in that direction.”
The Clint Eastwood-directed biopic of Navy Seal Chris Kyle, starring Bradley Cooper, is already the highest-grossing war film in the US, having gone past the $216.3m lifetime total of Saving Private Ryan. (However, Ryan was released in 1998, and adjusted for inflation its takings are equivalent to $373.6m.)
Guardians of the Galaxy remains the top-earning film entirely within the calendar year 2014, with $328.1m out of its domestic total of $333.1m.
