Free Republic

The Easter season brings not one but three prominent releases of Christian films. I Can Only Imagine, a biopic based on the wildly popular Christian song of the same title, surprised observers with a $17 million opening weekend and added another $21 million since. Later this week, the next entry in the God’s Not Dead franchise, A Light in the Darkness, opens with John Corbett and Tatum O’Neal in the cast. Both of these cover modern-day dilemmas facing Christians, but Paul Apostle of Christ takes audiences back to the roots of the faith by focusing on its most prolific...

Faith-based films performed well at the box office for a second straight weekend, with "I Can Only Imagine" capturing the third spot once again. "Paul, Apostle of Christ" landed in the eighth spot in its debut weekend, earning $5 million for Sony's Affirm Films. "I Can Only Imagine" held strong in its second weekend in theaters, scoring a solid $13.8 million. That brings its total earnings to $38 million – an impressive performance for a film that only cost $7 million to create.

When the Dennis Quaid starring movie I CAN ONLY IMAGINE released last weekend, few thought that it would gross $17 million in its opening weekend, with a per-screen average of $10,400. Considering the movie had a production budget of $7 million, this is an outstanding return no matter how you slice it. In comparison, 21st Century Fox’s LGBT teen romance movie which opened in 800 more theaters than I CAN ONLY IMAGINE grossed only $11 million with a per-screen average of $4,700. It also beat out Disney’s A WRINKLE IN TIME in its second weekend, which only brought in $16...

The faith-based film "I Can Only Imagine" brought in $17.1 million at the domestic box office during its opening weekend, going far beyond early expectations and ranking third, behind "Tomb Raider" and "Black Panther." Based on the true-story of Christian artist Bart Millard's life, the family drama opened at 1,629 locations in the United States and received an A+ CinemaScore with an audience that was 67 percent female and 80 percent over 35. This is the distributor Roadside Attractions' highest grossing opening ever. "We felt that the film's inspiring story of hope and forgiveness made for a very compelling collaboration,"...

The nation’s moviegoers look to be turning out in bigger numbers for a Christian-themed independent film than for the first mainstream teen movie with a gay main character. Roadside Attractions’ “I Can Only Imagine,” based on the story of the biggest-selling Christian song of all time, is looking at an estimated $14 million-plus for the weekend from 1,629 locations, far outdoing earlier estimates of $2 million-$8 million. Meanwhile, Fox’s “Love, Simon” is garnering attention for featuring a love story centering on a teenage boy coming out, and is looking at a $12 million-plus weekend on 800 more screens than the...