Posted on 04/01/2014 1:45:26 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The Bible has long been a rich source of story ideas for filmmakers, and recently released movies like Son of God and Noah suggest that the biblical epic genre is far from exhausted. There are many reasons why filmmakers continue to make movies based on biblical stories. The Bible’s familiar stories feature larger-than-life characters, plenty of action, and time-tested storylines.
However, from the film producer’s perspective, the primary reason why films based on biblical stories continue to be made is that these films are consistently able to make money.
Darren Aronofsky’s interpretation of the biblical story of Noah opened last Friday with a respectable $15.2 million domestic take, according to Box Office Mojo. Son of God, a biblical drama based on the story of Jesus, raked in $25.6 million during its opening weekend in February and has grossed $56.7 million so far, per Box Office Mojo’s numbers.
However, Aronofsky’s Noah may not be the highest-grossing biblical epic of 2014. Ridley Scott, known for directing blockbusters like Alien and Gladiator, will be releasing his own biblical epic, Exodus: Gods and Kings, in December, according to IMDb. The film tells the biblical story of the Israelites’ exodus out of Egypt and stars Christian Bale as Moses.
With the recent resurgence of big-budget biblical epics, we thought this would be an opportune time to take a look at some of the most successful films in this genre.
Here is a list of the top five highest-grossing movies based on biblical stories.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Do you notice that the top grossing ones are “ancient films” made decades ago. Back then they did fairly good (not perfect, but quite good). Nowadays any so-called “biblical” movie is actually “anti-biblical” and infused thoroughly with leftist, liberal, ‘green’ and enviro-whacko IDEOLOGY ... just like the recent “Noah” movie is.
Here’s a list of Freeper articles on the Noah movie ...
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/noahthemovie/index
Except for The Passion Of The Christ
and tanks BIG
They’ve got that listed as #4 out of their top 5 ... :-) ...
TPOTC came out 10 years ago. Hardly ancient.
I was talking about #1, 2 and 3 ... :-) ...
Uh, I’m skeptical of this “most successful” list.
Number 5, the “Prince of Egypt,” was a financial disaster for DreamWorks. It didn’t even make its production budget back, let alone go into profit.
And “The Ten Commandmants” bests “The Passion of the Christ?” for the Number 1 slot? Make me laugh. “Commandmants” was a money-maker in its day — it made 65 million domestically, about a 100 million globally. And it still plays on TV yearly. But “Passion” grossed 600 million dollars around the world.
I don’t buy this business of “adjusting for inflation” when talking about film grosses. Why would you do that? There are a lot more people around buying movie tickets today, too. Should you adjust those numbers because there are 300 million people in the US now, just to make it “fair” for the filmmakers who were working in the fifties with a population of only 175 milllion?
“Passion” is the most successful Bible-based movie ever.
I watched a low budget movie a few weeks ago which was the story of Esther. I remember thinking the story was so good that it needed a big budget treatment.
Probably never happen tho and if they do they will probably mess it up.
Adjusted for Inflation, the Ten Commandments’ (Made in 1956) adjusted gross is $1,093,850,000.
The Budget for the movie in 1956 was a “mere” $13 Million.
See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ten_Commandments_(1956_film)
Today, adjusted for inflation, $13 Million would be about : $110 Million (Still a smaller budget then Noah ).
The story of Daniel would make for a great big budget movie IMHO.
One reason the story of Esther appeals to me is it is partly about King Xerxes, the villain in “300”. Of course the real king was not even remotely like that truly idiotic depiction.
He is named Ahasuerus in the Bible and I am not sure how the name Xerxes came about but historians say they are the same person.
Why the need to “adjust for inflation” when talking about budgets or box office gross?
If you “adjusted for inflation,” you could argue that Henry Ford’s Model T and tractor operation is more successful than the Ford Motors of today. Nobody makes that argument, because it’s absurd.
“Passion of the Christ” has made at least three times the money at the box office that “The Ten Commandmants” made. If you factor in DVD, it’s made six times that amount. In raw dollars, it’s clearly the more successful film.
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