Box office: Angels can't save this weekend

The combined power of Ordinary Angels and The Chosen Season 4 couldn't quite match other "faith-based" hits that have opened at this time of year.

Hilary Swank as Sharon Stevens in Ordinary Angels.

The last weekend of February has been pretty good to “faith-based” films.

It was on this weekend two decades ago that The Passion of the Christ came out and woke Hollywood up to the fact that there is a potentially huge audience for such films.

Ten years later, Son of God—a re-edited version of the Jesus-themed episodes from the History Channel’s Bible miniseries—opened to $25.6 million, an astoundingly good figure for a film that consisted almost entirely of footage that people had already seen on TV or via DVD. (The film earned $59.7 million in total by the end of its run.)

And then, last year, Jesus Revolution—a dramatization of the Jesus People movement of the late ’60s and early ’70s, starring Kelsey Grammer as a middle-aged pastor and The Chosen’s Jonathan Roumie as a charismatic hippie he takes under his wing—surprised the industry with a $15.9 million debut. (The film went on to gross $52.1 million.)

So it’s fitting, perhaps, that there were two “faith-based” films in the top ten this past weekend that shared some DNA with those earlier late-February hits:

• Ordinary Angels, starring Hilary Swank as a hairdresser who rallies her community in support of a critically ill girl whose father (Alan Ritchson) can’t pay for her surgery, was produced by Kingdom Story, the company that made Jesus Revolution.

• And The Chosen Season 4: Episodes 4-6, now in its second week, is of course part of an ongoing hit series about Jesus and his followers that stars Jonathan Roumie.

However, neither of these films was able to replicate the success of its predecessors.

• Ordinary Angels opened to an estimated $6.5 million, which is less than half of what Jesus Revolution opened to, and is well below the openings for other hospital-heavy “faith-based” films with mainstream stars like 2019’s Breakthrough ($11.3 million) and 2016’s Miracles from Heaven ($14.8 million).

• Meanwhile, The Chosen Season 4: Episodes 4-6—which ends its theatrical run this coming Wednesday—earned an estimated $1.8 million in its second weekend and raised its total to $7.9 million, which is just a little more than half of the $13.9 million that Episodes 1-3 earned earlier this month.

On top of that, even when you combine the grosses for Ordinary Angels and The Chosen, the two films still earned only $8.3 million this week, which is still quite a bit less than what Jesus Revolution opened to last year, to say nothing of the two Jesus films that happen to be celebrating their 10th and 20th anniversaries this year.

More details below, in the film-by-film breakdown.

Meanwhile, The Chosen was part of another coincidental trend this week: it was one of two big-screen releases that consisted entirely of episodes from a TV series.

The other such release was Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: To the Hashira Training, the third film to come out of the popular anime series. It opened to $11.6 million, which was slightly better than the second film’s $10.1 million debut last year, but just a little more than half of the $21.2 million that the first film opened to in 2021.

With niche releases like these performing relatively softly, and no major new movies in theatres, overall ticket sales came to only $58.8 million or so this weekend. If that estimate holds, then this will be the 3rd-lowest weekend of the year so far (out of eight weekends to date), and lower than all but two of last year’s weekends.

It is hoped that Dune: Part Two will bring some much needed relief next week. It might even do more, on its own, than all of this week’s movies did. We shall see.

Meanwhile, in other news…

• Drive-Away Dolls had the worst first weekend of any film directed by at least one Coen brother that opened in wide release.

• Migration is the first film to be in the Top 5 for ten weeks since Barbie.

• Anyone But You is on the verge of grossing over $200 million worldwide.

• And the multi-Oscar-nominated Poor Things is on the verge of becoming the first Yorgos Lanthimos film to gross over $100 million worldwide.

And now, a few more stats and facts re: this week’s top ten, title by title: