Box office: Jesus Revolution hangs in there in its fifth week
Box office: Jesus Revolution hangs in there in its fifth week
It is now one of only nine "faith-based" films to be in the top ten for five straight weeks.
Jesus Revolution had another decent hold in its fifth week at the box office.
The film—which dramatizes the rise of the Christian hippie movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s—is currently on track to earn $2 million this weekend, which would give it a total gross of $49 million since opening a month ago.
A few quick data points:
This weekend’s gross represents a drop of 42.6% from the film’s fourth weekend, which is somewhere in the middle for a “faith-based” film in its fifth week; it is also one of the better holds among this week’s top ten. (Creed III and Avatar: The Way of Water were the only films from last week’s top ten that had clearly smaller drops, percentage-wise, this week: 32.1% and 33.3%, respectively.)
Jesus Revolution was #7 on last week’s chart and might slip a notch to #8 this week, but it all depends on how well it does compared to Cocaine Bear, which is currently on track for $2.09 million this week. Jesus Revolution could conceivably pull ahead of that film by the time the final figures come out tomorrow.
Jesus Revolution is now one of only nine “faith-based” films that have been in the top ten for five straight weeks, the others being 2004’s The Passion of the Christ, 2011’s Soul Surfer, 2014’s Heaven Is for Real, 2015’s War Room, 2016’s Miracles from Heaven, 2018’s I Can Only Imagine, 2019’s Overcomer, and 2021’s American Underdog. One other film—2011’s Courageous—bounced back into the top ten in its fifth week after dropping to #11 in its fourth week.1
A bit of historical context: The first “faith-based” film to crack the top ten was The Omega Code in 1999. The second was Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie, which opened at #6 and spent three of its first four weeks in the top ten in 2002. After that, The Passion of the Christ came out in 2004 and spent eight weeks in the top ten, four of them in the #1 spot. The Passion had the advantage of being directed by a major movie star whose previous directorial effort had won him a couple of Oscars, but Christian films without those sorts of advantages have been increasingly common on the top-ten charts since then—and, since Son of God and Heaven Is for Real came out in 2014, there have been quite a few that opened in the top three, just like Jesus Revolution did last month.2
Jesus Revolution was the top-grossing Lionsgate film of the 2020s for the past two weeks, beating films like Plane ($32.1 million) and Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard ($38 million), but this week it got bumped by John Wick: Chapter 4, which grossed an estimated $73.5 million in its first weekend alone—a record-best for that franchise, and also the best opening for any R-rated film since 2019’s Joker.
Jesus Revolution was the 6th-highest-grossing release of 2023 last week, but John Wick has bumped it down to 7th-highest. The underperforming Shazam! Fury of the Gods will probably nudge it down to 8th-highest within a few days, too.
And now, for some updated charts.
Among “faith-based” films, Jesus Revolution—which had the 6th-biggest first-weekend gross, the 9th-biggest second-weekend gross, and the 10th-biggest third-weekend and fourth-weekend grosses—will have the 9th-biggest fifth-weekend gross, if estimates hold.
The film has also now earned $49 million in total since opening, which is enough to make it the 9th-highest-grossing “faith-based” film to date.
Also, just for something new: I don’t often pay attention to the global box-office stats for “faith-based” films, as most of them don’t seem to get a lot of traction outside of the United States, plus many of them are produced and distributed by independent companies that rely on foreign distributors to handle their films if they get any sort of foreign distribution in the first place, which makes record-keeping tricky. But now that Jesus Revolution is doing so well domestically, I figured it might be worth taking a look at how it ranks worldwide, at least as far as Box Office Mojo is concerned.
As it stands, Jesus Revolution doesn’t seem to be reporting any foreign grosses yet, but here’s how it compares to other “faith-based” films globally right now:
The film hasn’t changed its position on the box-office charts for its three lead actors since last week, but here are the charts with the updated numbers:
And that, I think, about covers it. More later, perhaps.
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March 27 update: The final numbers are in, and Jesus Revolution ended up just slightly behind the estimate, with $1.97 million for the weekend:
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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)
‘Box office: Jesus Revolution earns another $8.65 million in its second week’ (March 5, 2023)
‘Box office: Jesus Revolution has a decent hold in its third week’ (March 12, 2023)
‘Box office: Jesus Revolution crosses $45 million in its fourth week’ (March 19, 2023)
Also worth noting: 2016’s Risen was in the top ten for four weeks, and then bounced back in its sixth week. And 2014’s God’s Not Dead was also in the top ten for four weeks, and then bounced back in its seventh week. American Underdog is a real outlier here, as it stayed in the top ten for seven straight weeks—longer than any “faith-based” film apart from The Passion of the Christ—yet it’s the lowest-grossing film on this list, by far (only $26.5 million, well behind the next-lowest-grossing film, Overcomer, which grossed $34.7 million). I assume this has something to do with the fact that it came out during the Christmas 2021 season, when a lot of studios were refusing to release new films because of the “Omicron wave”. The lack of competition allowed the films that did come out to stay afloat a little while longer.
Also in the Top Three club: 2015’s War Room (three weeks in the top three, one of them at #1!), 2018’s I Can Only Imagine (two weeks at #3!), 2016’s Risen and Miracles from Heaven, 2017’s The Shack, 2019’s Breakthrough and Overcomer, 2020’s I Still Believe, and 2022’s The Chosen Season 3: Episodes 1 & 2.