The highest-grossing movie of 2014 is now American Sniper

By Rick Marshall March 9, 2015

bradley cooper black flags miniseries american sniper — Warner Bros.

Director Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper may not have walked away with many trophies at the recent Academy Awards ceremony, but over the weekend it earned the distinction of being the highest-grossing movie released in 2014.

The Oscar-nominated film starring Bradley Cooper and based on the autobiography of U.S. Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle raked in $4.5 million over the most recent weekend, pushing its total U.S. box-office earnings to $337.2 million and making it the highest-grossing movie in the U.S. among films released in 2014. It now ranks just ahead of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 ($336.9 million) and Guardians of the Galaxy ($333.1 million) in the domestic box-office rankings for the year.

It’s worth noting that American Sniper just barely managed to sneak into the 2014 rankings, as the film didn’t get a wide release in U.S. theaters until January 15, 2015. It did, however, get a limited release in theaters and at film festivals in late 2014 in order to qualify for the Academy Awards — so it goes down in the books as a 2014 movie.

While American Sniper is currently the leader in the domestic box-office rankings, it hasn’t fared as well internationally. The film currently sits at #16 in worldwide box-office earnings, tied with the animated feature Rio 2, having earned $500.2 million in ticket sales globally. (That list is topped by Transformers: Age of Extinction with more than $1 billion in ticket sales and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies close behind it.)

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