Box office: Argylle underwhelms, while The Chosen rises up the chart

The Chosen opened at #2 for the first time ever this week. Also: Wonka joins the $200 million club.

L to R: Bryce Dallas Howard in Argylle, and Jonathan Roumie in The Chosen.

So much to talk about this week.

Too much, in fact. So I’m going to do something a little different: instead of a single box-office report that covers everything, I’m going to do a regular top-ten rundown in this post, and then I’m going to do another post that dives into some of the background and specifics around The Chosen Season 4: Episodes 1-3.

As longtime readers know, I’ve been tracking the box-office stats of “faith-based” films in general, and biblical films in particular (not that all biblical films are “faith-based” films, but you get the point), for a long, long time.

The Chosen has complicated things immensely, for me, because I am no longer just comparing the latest “faith-based” or biblical movie to other movies, I am comparing different installments within a “faith-based” biblical franchise to other installments within that franchise.

Sifting through that data can be a major project in and of itself, and I’m a little concerned that the sheer volume of it all might distort my regular weekend box-office reports—especially if there’s going to be a new surge of comparisons to make every other week for the next month or so.

I am also mindful of the fact that the box-office performance of these films can be very, very hard to predict. You may recall how unusually broad the range of estimates was for the opening of His Only Son last April. The predictions for The Chosen Season 4: Episodes 1-3 have been similarly all-over-the-map:

• On January 4, Box Office Pro predicted an opening in the $7-11 million range.

• By Thursday morning, they were predicting only $2.5-5.5 million.

• On Saturday, Deadline said The Chosen made $1.4 million on Thursday and was tracking to make only $3.3 million over the weekend, for a $4.7 million total.

• And now, as of Sunday, Deadline and other sources say The Chosen is looking at $6 million for the weekend and $7.5 million since opening on Thursday.

Who knows what the final numbers will be when the actual—not estimated—box-office figures are released later today? Not me.

And if I’m going to compare the newest installment of The Chosen to its predecessors in any detail, I’d prefer to do it with the best information possible.

So, I’m not going to say all that much about The Chosen right now. Instead, I’m going to table most of that analysis until later—possibly today, possibly tomorrow—when I can look at the final numbers and see where they go.

For now, I’m just going to do a fairly “normal” box-office report.

And, with that in mind, here are a few of the things I’ll be getting into below:

• Argylle, the weekend’s top film, was an underperformer both by its director’s standards and by the standards of Apple TV+ and other streaming services. (The film was distributed by Universal, but it was produced by Apple.)

• In just one weekend, The Chosen Season 4: Episodes 1-3 has already outgrossed recent Bible movies like Journey to Bethlehem and The Book of Clarence.

• Wonka is now the 8th movie of 2023 to gross over $200 million domestically.

The figures are from Box Office Mojo; the chart is my own.

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