'American Sniper' (And Its Creepy Doll Baby) Are Going to Beat the Heck Out of the Box Office This Weekend

American Sniper

Last weekend American Sniper broke records at the box office, earning $89.5 million (from Friday-Sunday, not including Martin Luther King Day) and blowing poorly reviewed competition The Wedding Ringer and Blackhat out of the water. This weekend is looking to be a repeat, with Clint Eastwood's brilliant, patriotic, propagandistic or downright racist (depends on whom you're talking to) Iraq war movie poised to soundly defeat new wide releases The Boy Next Door, Strange Magic and Mortdecai. 

American Sniper is expanding to 3,705 theatres, the widest release ever for an R-rated movie--that, combined with Oscar buzz and the movie's watercooler factor (thinkpieces upon thinkpieces upon thinkpieces about everything from its accuracy to its politics to that creepy fake baby), should bring it a second-weekend gross in the $50 million range. 

The Boy Next Door

The Jennifer Lopez erotic thriller The Boy Next Door will likely come in second place--reviews have been atrocious (14% on Rotten Tomatoes), but I personally found it enjoyable in an it's-so-bad-it's-good sort of way. The eponymous Boy charms Jennifer Lopez by giving her a first-edition copy of The Iliad. Let me repeat that: A first-edition copy of an ancient Greek epic poem. No, it's not on parchment. This movie was written by drunk squirrels.

Disney's Strange Magic, the brainchild of George Lucas, looks to be more like a The Phantom Menace than a The Empire Strikes Back. It may even be a (dare I say it) Howard the Duck. Reviewers are panning everything from its look to its apparently nonsensical plot to its musical choices (a Lady Gaga song puts in an appearance). Disney, likely sensing they have a stinker on their hands, has distanced themselves from the film's marketing. It's probably going to end up under $10 million, despite the fact that it's playing in over 3,000 theatres. 

Mortdecai

But nothing--nothing--compares to the mess that is Johnny Depp's Mortdecai, which is rocking an 8% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It will likely be the latest in a long string of Depp-starring flops, including Transcendence, The Lone Ranger and Dark Shadows.

The Oscar-nominated Whiplash is finally expanding to wide release after drumming up over $6.5 million in just under four months of limited. Expect it to earn another cool mil from people who have yet to see J.K. Simmons doing what J.K. Simmons does best: Being the greatest gosh-darn character actor there ever was.

Among the films hitting limited release in New York and/or LA are Cake, starring non-Oscar-nominee (despite the studios' best efforts) Jennifer Aniston as a woman who suffers from chronic pain; Mommy, the critically acclaimed fifth feature by 25-year-old Xavier Dolan (feel old yet?); Kevin MacDonald's Black Sea, which will have submarine enthusiasts lining up at the doors; and a pair of S&M-themed erotic movies, Drafthouse Films' R100 and IFC Films' The Duke of Burgundy. Both will likely be exponentially better than the infamous 50 Shades of Grey, hitting theatres on Valentine's Day weekend.