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In terms of ranking the performances, I believe a solid argument can and has been made in the replies above. I will counter by noting that we are still in the business of determining revenue gains predicated upon investment. Son of God was free-rolling because it was simply an edited version of a mini-series. Even so, there was a financial outlay of $22 million that triggered a return of $67 million in global revenue, roughly 88% of which came from the more lucrative North American side. Heaven Is for Real is at $34.5 million after in a week in North American theaters; its production budget is $12 million. Before its theatrical run is finished, it will be a much larger winner than Son of God, even if more work was required in making the movie.

Noah is actually the worst of the four at the moment, garnering $300 million against a $125 million outlay. If more than 35% of its revenue were domestic, I would place it higher on the list. If its overseas revenue winds up significantly higher than the current amount of $200 million, I will re-evaluate. Until then, the clear winner in my estimation is God’s Not Dead, which was made for a song ($2 million) yet somehow managed to almost a factor of 25 more in box office revenue. That performance places it on the list of all-time greatest cinematic returns on investment.

Kim Hollis: I’d agree that at this point, there’s really nothing surprising about this result. The surprise will be when (if?) a faith-based movie fails. At that point, we’ll be analyzing what went wrong and why, and the answers may not be that easy to come by. I do believe that the audience for these films has been energized and empowered by knowing that they are being catered to in theaters and for the foreseeable future, I would expect that they’ll continue to support and reward people and productions who seem to be of a like mind.

With regards to the ranking of the performances, I’d agree that Noah is clearly on the bottom, though I do hesitate to even include it amongst these other films. It is neither directly nor intentionally meant to target people of faith. Son of God was preaching to the already converted, so it didn’t have nearly as much work to do to get the audience interested. Heaven Is for Real had the benefit of studio support as well as some bigger and more recognizable names, so I put it just a bit below God’s Not Dead (whose biggest star was Kevin Sorbo) in terms of impressiveness. With that said, I think it’s pretty remarkable that both of these films have been powerful performers in theaters. Studios really should continue this sort of micro-targeting, because it’s obviously paying dividends. Additionally, with digital advertising, it’s easy to market the product to precisely the right audience.


Kim Hollis: A Haunted House 2, the sequel no one was asking for, debuted with $8.8 million this weekend. What do you think of this result?

Edwin Davies: That some people really didn't have anything better to do than pay to see this, not even eat chocolate and/or get high? This release smacks of a lack of effort from everyone involved, from the filmmakers who slapped together a cheap sequel to an already slapdash "original", through to a marketing department who put almost no effort into differentiating it from the first one. This result feels in keeping with that, since it made less than half of what the first one did, and will sink like a stone next week, but it cost so little that it doesn't matter what happens to the film going forward. It's already depressingly profitable, in that any profit it makes is spitting in the eye of people who care about or put effort into making films.

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