Box office: Big George Foreman gets knocked out of the ring
Box office: Big George Foreman gets knocked out of the ring
One of the widest "faith-based" releases ever failed to crack the top ten.
Just a quick box-office update this week.
The big news, for those following “faith-based” films, is that Big George Foreman—a biopic about the titular boxing-legend-turned-preacher-and-barbecue-grill-pitchman—earned only $3 million this weekend and probably won’t land in the North American top ten.
That’s a poor result from any number of angles:
It’s the weakest opening of any “faith-based” film that has had a regular wide release so far this year (i.e. it’s weaker than Jesus Revolution and His Only Son).
It’s even weaker than the “weekend” figure for The Chosen Season 3: Finale, which was a limited Fathom Events “specialty” release that made most of its money on the Friday. (The finale started streaming on the Sunday.)
The opening was as weak as it was despite the fact that Big George Foreman had one of the widest releases of any “faith-based” film ever.1 I believe it is only the sixth film in that genre to have opened in more than 3,000 theatres:
The Passion of the Christ (2004) — $83.8mil / 3,043 theatres / $27,554 average
The Nativity Story (2006) — $8mil / 3,083 theatres / $2,603 average
Son of God (2014) — $25.6mil / 3,260 theatres / $7,853 average
Miracles from Heaven (2014) — $14.8mil / 3,047 theatres / $4,861 average
I Still Believe (2020) — $9.1mil / 3,250 theatres / $2,801 average
Big George Foreman (2023) — $3mil / 3,054 theatres / $982 average
Big George Foreman had a lower per-screen average than any of the “faith-based” films that did crack the top ten this year:
Left Behind: Rise of the Antichrist — $2.6mil / 1,407 theatres / $1,814 average
The Chosen Season 3: Finale — $3.6mil / 1,979 theatres / $1,831 average
Jesus Revolution — $15.8mil / 2,475 theatres / $6,416 average
His Only Son — $5.5mil / 1,920 theatres / $2,865 average
The Journey: A Music Special… — $1.2mil / 1,074 theatres / $1,118 average
Nefarious — $1.3mil / 933 theatres / $1,410 average
Big George Foreman — $3mil / 3,054 theatres / $982 average
Big George Foreman had one of the worst per-screen averages of any film, in any genre, that opened in over 3,000 theatres:
Reminiscence (2021) — $1.95mil / 3,265 theatres / $597 average
Copshop (2021) — $2.3mil / 3,005 theatres / $770 average
Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021) — $2.8mil / 3,188 theatres / $888 average
The Rhythm Section (2020) — $2.7mil / 3,049 theatres / $890 average
Big George Foreman (2023) — $3mil / 3,054 theatres / $982 average
Babylon (2022) — $3.6mil / 3,343 theatres / $1,077 average
Low grosses are bad, but higher costs make them worse.
Big George Foreman reportedly had a budget of $32 million, which is not only bigger than the budget for any other “faith-based” film released so far this year, it could very easily be bigger than all those budgets combined.
Jesus Revolution reportedly cost $15 million, and all of the other films I’ve been able to check were even less expensive to make (maybe $5 million apiece for The Chosen and Left Behind; a mere $250,000 for His Only Son).
Unlike a lot of “faith-based” films, Big George Foreman has a major studio behind it, i.e. Sony, which has an entire division, Affirm Films, devoted to this genre.
Big George Foreman had the second-lowest first-weekend gross of any non-documentary Sony/Affirm film, beating only the $1.5mil that All Saints opened to in 2017 (and that film opened in only 846 theatres).2
In case you’re wondering how Big George Foreman’s earnings compare to those of the year’s other big boxing movie so far, the entire first-weekend gross for Big George Foreman is just a little more than half of the $5.45 million that Creed III earned in Thursday-night previews alone in early March.
Why did Big George Foreman have such a poor opening? A few possibilities:
The film had limited mainstream appeal, as George Foreman’s heyday was a few decades ago now, plus there were no big names in the cast, aside from Forest Whitaker in a supporting role as Foreman’s trainer.
The film had limited “faith-based” appeal, because Foreman is not primarily known for his preaching—he’s not defined by it the way that, say, the protagonists in Jesus Revolution are—and there were no actors or directors attached to the film who had a proven track record with the “faith-based” audience.
Just about all of the other major “faith-based” films released so far this year were associated with The Chosen in some way, or they were made by people who had built their “brands” with films like God’s Not Dead and I Can Only Imagine. Big George Foreman had no obvious marketing hook like that.
The “faith-based” community responds best to films that seem to be coming from that community in some way. It doesn’t hurt if there’s a bona fide celebrity involved whose openness or ties to that community are already a matter of public record (e.g. Kelsey Grammer in Jesus Revolution). The real-life Foreman might be recognized as a man of faith, but if there was anyone behind or in front of the cameras who had ties to the “faith” community, I never got that vibe from any of the marketing materials that I saw.
In case you’re wondering, Big George Foreman was directed by George Tillman Jr., the director of Soul Food (1997), Men of Honor (2000), Notorious (2009), Faster (2010), The Longest Ride (2015), and The Hate U Give (2018). He is also a producer on the Barbershop / Beauty Shop films (2002-2016).
In a nutshell, the film may have been too secular for the sacred crowd, and it may have been too sacred for the secular crowd.
Unlike Jesus Revolution, which straddled the mainstream and “faith-based” worlds by combining elements that had a strong appeal to both audiences, Big George Foreman basically fell in the cracks between those worlds by lacking elements that had strong appeal to either of those audiences.3
Those are all reasons why the film might have grossed only $3 million. As for why it didn’t crack the top ten: In addition to holdovers like Evil Dead Rise and John Wick: Chapter 4, it got bumped by no fewer than four new releases, none of which grossed all that much, including an adaptation of Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret ($6.8mil, 3rd place), the 40th anniversary re-release of Return of the Jedi ($4.7m, 5th place), and a couple of foreign films: the Indian Ponniyin Selvan: Part Two ($3.8mil, 8th place) and the Finnish Sisu ($3.25mil, 10th place).
The box office was dominated, for the fourth week running, by The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which has now had the biggest 2nd, 3rd, and 4th weekends of any animated movie ever. With $490 million in North America and $1.02 billion worldwide, it is currently the 3rd-biggest animated film in North America (behind Incredibles 2 and the remake of The Lion King) and the 11th-highest-grossing animated film worldwide.
In other news…
The only other “faith-based” film that released any weekend estimates today was the horror film Nefarious, which grossed $530,000 in its third week and raised its domestic total to $3.4 million.
Also, Jesus Revolution is now reporting a sliver of foreign revenue: just $66,364, all from New Zealand. The film has earned $52.1 million in North America, and this extra boost from Down Under almost takes its global total to $52.2 million.
And… that might be it, for “faith-based” films for the next few months.
As I noted last week, there are currently no wide releases planned for the genre until Ordinary Angels and Journey to Bethlehem come out in the fall, on October 13 and November 10 respectively. (A teaser for Journey to Bethlehem was released this week; I assume it played in theatres before Big George Foreman.)
However, Angel Studios announced this week that they’re going to announce a release date for Sound of Freedom on May 11… so we’ll see when that comes out. Then again, as I noted last week, it’s not clear to me that that film is a “faith-based” film, per se.
More details tomorrow, if and when they come…
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May 2 update: The final numbers are in, and Big George Foreman fell slightly behind projections, with $2.9 million and a $957 per-screen average.
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Past posts on the Erwin brothers and Jesus Revolution:
‘Box-office update: R-rated Neighbors a smash hit, PG-rated Moms’ Night Out disappoints, and more’ (May 11, 2014)
‘Review: Moms’ Night Out (dir. Jon & Andrew Erwin, 2014)’ (May 21, 2014)
‘I Can Only Imagine and Steve McQueen: American Icon co-director Jon Erwin on rooting for the underdog and following your dreams’ (March 16, 2018)
‘Box office: Bible movies underperform on three continents while I Can Only Imagine goes from success to success’ (March 27, 2018)
Other box-office reports: Weekend 3
‘A new Bible-movie trilogy is in the works from the makers of I Can Only Imagine and the studio behind The Shack’ (March 27, 2019)
‘From Jesus Christ to Jesus freak’ (September 2, 2022)
‘A new featurette gives us our first look at Jesus Revolution’ (October 8, 2022)
‘Hippies-for-Christ flick Jesus Revolution gets a trailer’ (October 22, 2022)
‘The Chosen’s successors: a new Left Behind movie and the Jesus Revolution?’ (November 22, 2022)
‘A few brief thoughts about Jesus Revolution’ (February 24, 2023)
‘Box office: Jesus Revolution is a “faith-based” hit’ (February 26, 2023)
Source: the Box Office Mojo list of Christian films, minus the Narnia movies (which, to my mind, are just regular big-budget fantasy movies), plus the Christian films that have come out since theatres re-opened post-Covid. (Box Office Mojo’s list doesn’t have anything more recent than I Still Believe, which came out just a few days before the lockdowns began.)
These are the Sony/Affirm films and their opening-weekend performances (the list includes three Kendrick brothers films that were not distributed by Sony, but since most of their films are distributed by Sony, I figured I’d include them here):
I’m not saying that a lot of non-Christians went to Jesus Revolution—I honestly don’t know—but the presence of Kelsey Grammer caught their attention at least, and I can only assume it elevated the film’s status in the eyes of its target audience. “This movie has real stars!”