Box office: The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is one of the bigger recent "faith-based" hits

The Dallas Jenkins-directed adaptation of the 1972 children's novel exceeded expectations, as did the religion-themed horror film Heretic.

Imogene Herdman (Beatrice Schneider) and Grace Bradley (Judy Greer) in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.

Christmas came a little early for some people this week.

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, a “faith-based” adaptation of the 1972 children’s novel, exceeded expectations and is currently estimated to have been the biggest new movie of the week, slightly beating the religion-themed horror film Heretic.

Both films are thought to have grossed at least $11 million, but we won’t know their actual grosses—and, thus, how they rank on the chart—until later today.

Pageant, to be fair, owes a fair chunk of its official weekend take to the $2.8 million it earned in preview screenings last week. (Those screenings included a sneak peek of The Chosen Season 5, which shares a director, i.e. Dallas Jenkins, and a few actors with Pageant.) Without that boost, it definitely would have landed behind Heretic this week.

But less important than how these films rank is the fact that both were made on modest budgets—$10 million or less—and they can already be considered definite successes. Also, Pageant in particular is a bright spot in the careers or recent histories of its filmmakers, its studio, and the “faith-based” genre as a whole. It had:

• The best opening of any film in director Jenkins’ career, including all seven of The Chosen’s theatrical releases.

• The 3rd-best opening of any film produced by the Erwin brothers (behind I Can Only Imagine and Jesus Revolution).

• One of the top dozen openings of any “faith-based” movie ever, and the 2nd-best of any “faith-based” movie post-Covid (behind Jesus Revolution).

• The 2nd-best opening of any Lionsgate release this year, behind The Strangers: Chapter 1 (which opened only slightly higher, with $11.8 million, in May).

For more details, complete with charts—including where the film ranks in the careers of its co-stars Judy Greer (the woman who directs the pageant), Pete Holmes (the woman’s husband), and Lauren Graham (the narrator)—see below.

Meanwhile, a few of this week’s other highlights:

• Venom: The Last Dance topped the chart for a third straight week and is now one of the top ten movies of the year worldwide (and one of the top twenty movies ever worldwide that was directed or co-directed by a woman).

• The Wild Robot continues to hold really, really well, and is now the 2nd-highest-grossing “original” animated movie of the decade.

• Anora is now Sean Baker’s top-grossing movie ever.

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