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Kim Hollis: I don't know if there are enough superlatives to heap upon American Sniper's performance, because it has exceeded every possible expectation that any reasonable person could have had for it. If there is a single person who says they saw this box office result coming, they are the biggest liars ever. Like Matt, I'm not a fan of the film (at all), and I do think it's pretty fascinating that it has managed to be so polarizing even as it became such a massive blockbuster. It is the biggest story of 2015 even if it's a 2014 film, and I'm not sure that anything can beat it with regards to interest and intrigue - not even Avengers or Star Wars.

Ryan Kyle: American Sniper is a force of nature that is not meant to be understood. I can't for the life of me wrap my head around why this film made so much money. This is not a knock against the film's quality (I quite enjoyed it), but towards the question why this movie excelled to unprecedented heights compared to why other war movies starring Hollywood hunks debuted DOA. It's an interesting #1 film of the year that I'm sure will be looked back upon many years from now as an indicator for the American political climate in 2014.

Edwin Davies: I'll echo everyone else and say that this is surprising. So much seemed to be arrayed against American Sniper in terms of potential success. War movies have been fairly unpopular in recent years; Clint Eastwood's had a bad run at the box office since Gran Torino; the R rating tends to limit the audiences for films in general, and dramas in particular. It clearly struck a nerve with a pretty broad range of audiences initially, which is why it got so many people into theaters in its opening weekend, and the controversy surrounding it since then has probably fueled its continued success: it became such a talking point that people felt they had to see it, in a way that wasn't the case with the The Winter Soldier or Mockingjay.

Kim Hollis: Now that we're two months into 2015, what do you think about the year in box office/film so far?

Jason Barney: I think it is very interesting. I will be interested to see where the final numbers come out for this last weekend, because up until the middle of February we were approaching record territory for the start of a year. American Sniper, Fifty Shades of Gray, Kingsman: Secret Service, SpongeBob....and all of the lesser films. It is an odd mix of box office success that has inched its way into the record books.

It is impressive when box office numbers are so large, especially against the perception that 2014 was an off year.

Michael Lynderey: A couple of weird movies seem to have made a lot of money for no particular reason. And I don't even mean American Sniper, which I long ago have stopped trying to understand and now simply accept as a force of nature for which no explanation could exist, so there's no point trying to find one.

Otherwise, things haven't been that unexpected - Fifty Shades is the biggest movie of the year but isn't going to touch $200 million, Taken 3 didn't cross $100 million, Wedding Ringer was okay, and a few of the genre movies didn't do so well, not unexpectedly (Blackhat, Seventh Son, Jupiter Ascending, etc.). It's really SpongeBob and Sniper that have changed the atmosphere, with the latter becoming the biggest movie of 2014, something that I would rationally assume no one was expecting (anyone?).

Ryan Kyle: The film quality so far this year has been better than the average January/February dumping ground fare, but the box office levels have been extraordinary. It's been a very "feast or famine" climate at the box office, with films opening gigantically or barely registering. It will be interesting to see if this trend continues into the summer, which should smash some records with the seemingly stacked line-up of hit after hit. March is a month that has a lot of interesting films scheduled so it will be fun to see if audiences are going to continue to buy tickets in droves for more untested fare like Chappie and Home and to see if more safe bets like Get Hard, Insurgent, and Cinderella get the opening weekend boosts this year's February releases have. April seems arguably weak, although Furious 7 should prop things up until the summer blockbusters.

David Mumpower: What I take from the marvelous first two months of 2015 is that it really is the quality of the movies. I felt like we were having to explain every box office disappointment last year by starting with, "If they'd made a better movie..." That's the problem with all of these sequels and reboots that are developed to cater to the foreign markets. They simply don't entice consumers. Say what you will about 50 Shades of Grey and American Sniper but they are both original stories. Sniper is unapologetically jingoistic and Grey is shamelessly sexual. Similarly, Kingsman is a new variation on an old idea as well. North American consumers are speaking with their wallets about how important fresh premises are. Anybody reading this in a production office right now should take note.

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