Is Spike Lee's battle for Oscar already over?

When your multi-million dollar World War II epic gets beaten at the box office by a Kirk Cameron drama financed by a church, perhaps it’s time to ditch your Oscar-campaign plans. After receiving largely negative reviews, Spike Lee’s Miracle at St. Anna flopped this weekend, earning just $3.5 million, according to studio estimates. By comparison, Cameron’s Fireproof debuted with $6.5 million despite playing in over 300 fewer theaters. While promoting Miracle at Cannes this spring, Lee criticized Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima for having no African-American characters, prompting a brief war of words between the two Academy-recognized filmmakers. But given that Iwo Jima ended up scoring a Best Picture nomination and Miracle appears to be DOA, it looks like Eastwood has won this war.

addCredit(“David Lee”)