It may have been overlooked during the awards season, but Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino is outperforming all five best-picture contenders in North America. Since a wide release on January 9, Gran Torino has grossed $145.2m domestically and passed $65m internationally. This brings its worldwide tally for Warner Bros Pictures within sight of the $217m worldwide gross amassed by Million Dollar Baby in 2005.

Gran Torino has also given Eastwood his best-ever North American opening of $25.6m, beating Space Cowboys record $18m in 2000.

'(Eastwood's) unique approach to film-making lent us the opportunity to position the film both as a prestige picture and a crowd pleaser, which fortunately was borne out in the US results,' says Sue Kroll, president of worldwide marketing at Warner Bros. 'The timing was also ideal for this dual approach.'

Gran Torino is gaining as much traction at the international box office. It knocked Slumdog Millionaire from the top spot in the UK ($9.7m to date), consigned Pedro Almodovar's Broken Embraces to a second-place opening on its third week on release in Spain ($8.8m and counting), and has grossed an impressive $18.5m after four weeks on release in France. In Australia, word-of-mouth buzz pushed up the film's second-week grosses by 9%. It has now taken $10.1m after nine weeks on release.

In all of these territories Eastwood has smashed previous best-opening weekend records for any of his films.

'The (international) release was positioned after the US opening to take advantage of the incumbent press saturation and critical recognition, and then we got the added bonus of the film's spectacular domestic result,' explains Veronika Kwan-Rubinek, president of international distribution at Warner Bros.

Most recently, Brazil (March 20-22) has added another record opening for an Eastwood film with $409,000 (real934,000) and more than 86,500 admissions from 104 screens. However, it was not able to topple Slumdog from the top spot on Slumdog's third weekend.

Gran Torino is the story of a Korean War veteran, played by Eastwood, who strikes up an unlikely friendship with his immigrant neighbours. The film has received generally good reviews around the world, with critics using adjectives such as 'masterful' and 'hugely entertaining'. (In North America, Gran Torino received noticeably warmer reviews than Eastwood's other autumn 2008 release, Changeling, which grossed $35.7m from its North American run.)

'In international markets, we had the benefit of excellent reactions from press and audiences alike, with consistent positive word of mouth,' says Kroll.

Worldwide, Gran Torino is now less than $7m behind Million Dollar Baby's $217m total gross, with roughly a third of its international markets yet to open. These include Russia on April 9 and Japan on April 25.

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