Box Office Review of Christian Films - How They Rate

If you've been to the movies lately, you may have seen titles such as "Son of God", "Heaven is Real" and "God's Not Dead". Are you curious if anyone is watching these "religious" films? Or, do you have a faith the pulls you toward movies like this? Let's discover how they are rating in the box office and if they are a hit or not.

First, let’s look at “God’s Not Dead” in comparison to other big budget films that opened the same weekend. This film was only shown in 780 screens compared to the competition’s 3200 screens, yet held up its end on the competitive side making $10,979 per screen. This is in comparison to the $14,228 for “Divergent” and $5,170 for “The Muppets” (Moviefone, 2014).

Just like “God’s Not Dead”, “Son of God” did well in the box office. Coming out at the same time as “Non-Stop”, a Liam Neeson film, the “Son of God” movie’s box office release forecast was impressive. Studying the digital marketing effort for this movie, these statistics show how popular “Son of God” was in comparison to “Non-Stop” one week before release.

 

Image source:

 Image source: http://variety.com/2014/digital/news/social-media-buzz-has-liam-neeson-put-the-fear-in-son-of-god-1201123385/

 

Image source:

http://variety.com/2014/digital/news/social-media-buzz-has-liam-neeson-put-the-fear-in-son-of-god-1201123385/

Opening weekend of these two movies proved they were close in sales. “Sonof God” came in at $26.5 million and “Non-Stop” at $30 million. The overall box office for “Son of God” was $59,646,236, and world wide was $69,402,236. The production cost $37,000,000, therefore making a nice profit. (Boxoffice, 2014).

Considering the star power and big budgets these Christian movies are up against, they hold their own in the box office. Reviewers liken the popularity to targeting a particular audience before the movie is released.

“Heaven is Real” showed a good on its release with $22.5 million during its Fri-Sun debut. It had reached $29.5 million in the first five days.

Overall, faith based films are doing well in the box office, even though most are not big budget films. Sccott Mendelson of Forbes.com reviews how “Heaven is Real” could very likely top the charts of box office sales, if all the factors fall in place. He states that we will know when we know.

To someone in the faith film industry, this is encouraging news! I hope you will find your way to seeing one or more of these productions. You may just find they are more enticing than you originally thought.