American Sniper shatters the January box office records

American Sniper looked like Secretariat pulling away from the pack!

It took in $90 million.

How good is that? It's more than the next best two January openings added together! In its first two days of wide release, it became the highest-grossing Oscar nominee. It has now grossed $93M, compared to $59M for the next-highest nominee, The Grand Budapest Hotel.

How surprising is that? The Weekend Warrior originally predicted that it would gross $21 million, and in so doing, would lose the weekend to The Wedding Ringer. Wowsa!

How the top new releases fared:

Sniper $90M (1st).

Wedding Ringer $21M (2nd). It did OK, just a hair below expectations.

Paddington $19M (3rd). Paddington did better than expected.

Blackhat $4M (10th). Blackhat was a nuclear bomb. That was the 13th-worst opening of all time among films in 2500 or more theaters, and the all-time worst among January openings at that level of distribution.