American Sniper Shatters January Box Office Records

The Clint Eastwood directed film, American Sniper opened big at the box office after it grossed over $90 million in ticket sales. The film exceeded expectations by setting new records for a January opening. American Sniper's weekend performance is all the more impressive when you consider January is usually a slow month at the box office. The film broke the record set by Cloverfield ($17.2 million) which was released in Jan 18, 2008.

American Sniper, which was originally scheduled for a limited release, received a lot of patronage from several movie screens following their success at last week's Oscar nominations. In the process, the movie also broke a couple of records previously held by James Cameron's Avatar in January. The sci-fi film had originally grossed $68.5 million and $28.5 million for the biggest weekend performance and the biggest gross in a single day respectively for the same month.

Other films featured in this week's Top 5 list are The Wedding Ringer, Paddington, Taken 3 and Selma. Michael Mann's cyber thriller Blackhat starring Chris Hemsworth performed poorly at the cinemas managing to gross only $4 million during its opening weekend.

American Sniper is based on the real life story of Navy Seal Chris Kyle who went on to become one of the most lethal snipers in US military history. Kyle served 4 tours of Iraq and received several commendations for his acts of heroism and meritorious service during combat. The film is based on his best-selling autobiography of the same name. Chris Kyle was shot and killed in February 2013 while practicing at a shooting range in Chalk Mountain, Texas.