On this thread someone estimated a maximum of $300 million.
I'm wondering why they decided to cut off their projections after just a mere 3 weeks from opening day??
Such pessimists. Or is that just post event wishful thinking?
The Passion is pretty much unpredictable. On one hand, you have the devout believers going to see it. On the other hand, it is rated R. R rated movies tend to not gross as high, because the primary movie audience is teenagers. The other factor that gets movies way up to $300 mill is repeatability. Star Wars doesn't actually get 80 million people in the audience. However it does get a good 10 million of those viewers to see it 5 times or more.
Honestly, this movie could pass Titanic, or it could peter out at under $300,000,000. There really is no benchmark here. Any "professional" giving a number is just making an extremely wild guess.