Box office: Jesus Revolution earns another $8.65 million in its second week
Box office: Jesus Revolution earns another $8.65 million in its second week
The Christian-hippie movie slid 45% from its opening weekend, which is steeper than usual for a "faith-based" film.
The revolution might be fading just a little quicker than usual at the box office.
Jesus Revolution—a dramatization of the Christian hippie movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s—is currently on track to earn $8.65 million in North America this weekend. That’s a 45.5% drop from what it earned when it opened last week.
Drops like that are not unusual—in fact, Jesus Revolution had one of the smaller drops, percentage-wise, of this week’s top ten—but it’s still a little steep for a “faith-based” film in wide release. Of the fifteen previous “faith-based” films that grossed over $5 million in their second weeks, the only one that had a steeper second-weekend drop was Son of God, a big-screen re-packaging of The Bible, a TV miniseries that had already been on DVD for several months when the film came out.
As it is, Jesus Revolution, which last week had the 6th-biggest opening-weekend gross of any “faith-based” film, now has the 9th-biggest second-weekend gross.
One possible reason for the steeper drop could be that Jesus Revolution had two nights of preview screenings—on the Wednesday and the Thursday before its opening weekend—rather than just the usual Thursday-night previews. All of the money from the preview screenings is rolled into the weekend figures, and it’s possible that that made the film’s opening weekend seem bigger than it was, relative to this week.
Either way, Jesus Revolution has now earned $30.5 million in total since opening, which is enough to make it the 17th-highest-grossing “faith-based” film to date.
Based on past trends, it’s fair to say that the average “faith-based” wide release makes roughly a quarter of its total gross on its opening weekend, so by that standard, we could perhaps expect Jesus Revolution to gross about $60 million total—but the steeper second-weekend drop suggests it might be on a trajectory closer to $50 million.
That’s still impressive for a film with a reported budget of $15 million, though.
Ranking-wise, the film was knocked down a couple notches—from #3 last week to #5 this week—by two new wide releases: Creed III, which set a brand new opening-weekend record for the Rocky universe with $58.7 million, and Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba - To the Swordsmith Village, which earned only $10.1 million, or less than half what the last entry in the anime series opened to in 2021, when theatres were just starting to re-open after a year of Covid lockdowns and release delays.
The other two spots in the top five were taken by Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania—which has fallen very steeply, from its $106.1 million opening two weeks ago to a mere $12.4 million this week—and Cocaine Bear, which added $11 million to its coffers. Ant-Man now has $186.7 million in total, and Cocaine Bear has $41.2 million.
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Incidentally, I got curious as to how Jesus Revolution ranks among the other films its three lead actors have been in. Here is what I found (caveats: this is based entirely on North American grosses, and this is before taking inflation into account):
Kelsey Grammer (Pastor Chuck Smith) currently has 121 acting credits at the IMDb, but a lot of them are in TV, and a lot of the rest simply don’t register at Box Office Mojo. Among the films that do, though, Jesus Revolution currently ranks 11th, and it’s probably the top-grossing live-action film in which Grammer has a lead role.
Jonathan Roumie (Lonnie Frisbee) has 66 credits at the IMDb but most of those, too, are in TV or otherwise do not register at Box Office Mojo. But among those that do, Jesus Revolution is clearly at the top of the list:
Joel Courtney (Greg Laurie) has 21 credits at the IMDb, but only three—including this film—register at Box Office Mojo, and Jesus Revolution is right in the middle:
And that, I think, about covers it. More later, perhaps.
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March 7 update: The final numbers are in, and Jesus Revolution came in slightly below estimates, with $8.47 million—a 46.7% drop since last week:
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An earlier version of this post included Christmas with The Chosen: The Messengers on Jonathan Roumie’s box-office chart, but he wasn’t really in that film, except for maybe a clip or two from the series. He did not shoot any new scenes for the film, at any rate.
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Past posts on the Erwin brothers and Jesus Revolution:
‘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)
‘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)