Of the many dozens of box office predictions that I’ve made since I began this blog, I must admit that estimating a number for this Friday’s Son of God is among the most challenging.
Why? Well there’s several factors in play. There are already stories circulating that churches are buying mass quantities of tickets for their congregations. This would lead one to believe that its debut could be quite impressive. Any movie focusing on Jesus Christ and the Christian faith is destined to play well in the heartland but perhaps not as much on the coasts. The all-time top February opener was ten years ago with Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, which earned $83 million in its first weekend.
Son of God shouldn’t come anywhere near that territory and this brings us to another factor in play. The movie itself is basically a cobbling together of scenes focusing on Jesus from last year’s History Channel miniseries “The Bible”. In other words, the vast majority of Son of God‘s material has already aired on a highly rated TV program. This fact begs the question: how much of the picture’s target audience are aware of this fact and will it lead to them perhaps skipping this?
Add it all up and this project from mega TV producer Mark Burnett and his actress wife Roma Downey has a very wide range of potential debuts. On the low end, we could see mid teens. On the high end… well who knows? This is precisely the type of project that could hugely exceed expectations and make something like $40 million out of the gate.
I will predict an opening in the mid to high 20s is most probable and it could certainly challenge both Non-Stop or The Lego Movie for box office dominance.
Son of God opening weekend prediction: $26.7 million
For my Non-Stop prediction, click here:
https://toddmthatcher.com/2014/02/23/non-stop-box-office-prediction/
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