What sort of track record do "faith-based" sequels have?
The question is prompted by the news that I Can Only Imagine 2 starts filming in a couple months.
The Passion of the Christ isn’t the only “faith-based” film with a sequel in the works.
A few weeks ago it was announced that I Can Only Imagine, arguably the top-grossing movie made by and for Evangelicals,1 is also getting a follow-up, which will start shooting in March. Depending on which video you follow on the Kingdom Story YouTube channel, the new film—which is inspired by a MercyMe song called ‘Even If’—will be called either I Can Only Imagine 2 or I Can Only Imagine: Even If.
This gets me wondering: what sort of track record do “faith-based” sequels have? How close have any of them come to matching the success of the original films?
Here’s a quick rundown of the titles that occur to me:
The Omega Code (1999) — Megiddo: The Omega Code 2 (2001)
Produced by the Trinity Broadcasting Network, The Omega Code was one of a spate of end-times movies that came out near the turn of the millennium—but unlike the others, which mostly went straight-to-video, this one was released in 304 theatres and became the first “faith-based” film to crack the weekly top ten. (Nearly every other film in the top ten that week was playing in 2,000 to 3,000 theatres.) The film, which starred a wonderfully hammy Michael York as the Antichrist, expanded to 450 theatres over the next few weeks and ended up grossing $12.6 million against a $7.2 million budget. Producer Matt Crouch then spent $20 million on a follow-up, Megiddo: The Omega Code 2, which wasn’t a direct sequel so much as it was a much more lavish re-telling of the original film, with York once again playing the Antichrist (and The Terminator’s Michael Biehn playing his brother). It came out just ten days after the 9/11 attacks and ended up grossing a mere $6 million domestically.
The sequel made only 47.9% of what the original film made.
Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie (2002) — The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything (2008)
Not exactly a case of one movie being a sequel to another—it’s more a case of one popular direct-to-video franchise getting two big-screen spin-offs—but let’s go with it: Jonah, an animated retelling of the biblical story (with, yes, vegetables playing most of the main characters), opened in 940 theatres and expanded to 1,625, grossing $25.6 million against a reported $14 million budget. Big Idea, the company that produced the film (and all the VeggieTales videos that preceded it), filed for bankruptcy the following year partly because of the strain the movie put on their finances, and they were soon bought by another company. They then went ahead and produced The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything on a near-identical budget of $15 million… and that film turned out to be an even bigger flop, grossing only $13 million.
The sequel made only 50.7% of what the original film made.
God’s Not Dead (2014) — God’s Not Dead 2 (2016)
Based on a book by Rice Broocks, produced by Pure Flix, and starring Kevin Sorbo as a villainous atheist professor (as well as The Newsboys and members of the Duck Dynasty clan as themselves), God’s Not Dead came out during a surge of interest in “faith-based” films that included the Bible-show spin-off Son of God and the near-death-experience movie Heaven Is for Real. Arriving in 780 theatres one week before Noah came out in thousands, God’s Not Dead quickly established itself as a must-see alternative to the controversial big-studio Bible epic, expanding to 1,860 theatres and grossing a then-unheard-of (for an Evangelical indie) $60.8 million against a $2 million budget. Two years later it got a sequel, which cost $5 million and grossed $20.8 million—still pretty good for a film of its type, but nowhere near the hit that its predecessor was. Three more sequels followed, the most recent of which came out a few months ago, but none have grossed more than $5.7 million, and the franchise has basically been relegated to Fathom specialty-release status now.
The first sequel made only 34.2% of what the original film made.
War Room (2015) — The Forge (2024)
Pastors-turned-filmmakers Alex and Stephen Kendrick, aka “the Kendrick brothers”, had already developed a stellar track record as the director and producer, respectively, of ministry-minded, micro-budgeted hits like Facing the Giants, Fireproof, and Courageous—films that grossed up to $35 million on budgets of $2 million or less (sometimes a lot less). But even by their standards, War Room (the title refers to a prayer closet where people can engage in “spiritual warfare”) was a phenomenon: produced for $3 million, it grossed a whopping $67.8 million and became the only “faith-based” film since The Passion of the Christ to be #1 at the box office for at least one week. Nine years later, they brought back a few of that film’s characters for The Forge, a spin-off in which Priscilla Shirer played the twin sister of her character from the previous film. It was the Kendricks’ first major movie since the Covid pandemic, and it did better than most “faith-based” films of its era, grossing $29.1 million against a $5 million budget—but it was also the Kendricks’ lowest-grossing regular release since 2006.
The sequel made only 43% of what the original film made.
Honourable mention:
Unbroken (2014) — Unbroken: Path to Redemption (2018)
This isn’t quite the same thing, because the first half of this duo was a mainstream movie and not a niche “faith-based” film, but: In 2014, Angelina Jolie, working from a script partly written by the Coen brothers (!), directed Unbroken, an adaptation of a book about Louis Zamperini, a former Olympic track star who survived two years in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp and went on to become a Christian evangelist. Produced by Legendary Pictures and distributed by Universal, Jolie’s film—which grossed $115.6 million and was, at the time, the 14th-highest-grossing live-action film directed by a woman—only got as far as the World War II part of the story, which disappointed some of the Christians who saw the film, so Pure Flix followed it up with Unbroken: Path to Redemption, a low-budget sequel ($6 million vs the first film’s $65 million) with a mostly-different cast (only the actors who played Zamperini’s parents returned) that covered the more explicitly religious part of the story after the war. It grossed a mere $6.2 million.
The sequel made only 5.4% of what the original film made.
So. In every case I can think of where a “faith-based” film got a “faith-based” sequel, the sequel ended up making only 34.2% to 50.7% what the first film made.
The original I Can Only Imagine grossed $83.5 million in 2018—so, if past precedents are anything to go by, the sequel will gross somewhere in the $28.6 million to $42.3 million range… which would actually be pretty good by post-Covid standards. (Only three “faith-based” films have grossed at least $28 million this decade: Jesus Revolution, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, and the aforementioned The Forge.)
Meanwhile, The Passion of the Christ grossed $370.3 million in 2004—it was the top-grossing R-rated film of all time, sans inflation, until Deadpool & Wolverine passed it last year—so again, if past precedents are anything to go buy, the sequel would gross somewhere in the $126.6 million to $187.7 million range… although that seems unlikely at this stage, for a bunch of reasons I won’t get into right now.
Am I forgetting any other high-profile “faith-based” films that had sequels?
I am aware of church-basement franchises like the one that began with 1972’s A Thief in the Night, but those films never had regular box-office data like the films above do.
Similarly, Peter and Paul Lalonde produced a string of end-times movies starting with 1998’s Apocalypse that all went straight to video, as did all three films in the original Left Behind trilogy (though the first film in that series did get a theatrical release after the video release). So those films can’t be compared to the films above, either.
The subsequent Left Behind films—including the 2014 Nicolas Cage reboot, the 2016 “next generation” film, and the 2023 film with Kevin Sorbo—have been all over the place continuity- and release-pattern-wise, so I’m reluctant to call any of those films “sequels” to the others or to compare their box-office performances.
And then there are curious cases like the Visual Bible series, which began with direct-to-video word-for-word adaptations of Matthew and Acts in the 1990s, and then—after a change of ownership, cast, and crew—ended with a big-screen word-for-word adaptation of The Gospel of John that grossed $4.1 million in 2003.
And no, The Chosen’s various theatrical releases don’t count. That’s a TV series, not a movie series, no matter how many seasons they launch on the big screen—but if you’re interested in that show’s box-office stats, click here.
If I’ve overlooked anything else, please let me know.
The only “faith-based” films that have made more money in North America than I Can Only Imagine are the deeply Catholic The Passion of the Christ and the heavily secularized Heaven Is for Real. If you count foreign grosses, I Can Only Imagine is also behind The Shack worldwide, and that film is a little harder to sub-classify.