The Star — the first animated feature based on the New Testament to be made by a major studio — had a less than stellar opening at the box office this week.
The Star earned an estimated $10 million between Thursday and Sunday nights — the smallest opening of any film released by Sony Pictures Animation. (Their previous smallest was the $11.1 million that The Pirates! Band of Misfits opened to in 2012.)
Among animated adaptations of the Bible, The Star had a noticeably smaller opening than DreamWorks’ The Prince of Egypt, which opened to $14.5 million in 1998, but a bigger opening than Artisan’s Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie, which opened to $6.2 million in 2001. (Universal’s The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything — which was also a “faith-based” cartoon but not a Bible adaptation — opened even smaller, with $4.3 million in 2008.)
The Star did have a stronger opening than the last couple of films about the Nativity, i.e. The Nativity Story, which opened to $7.8 million in 2006, and Black Nativity, which opened to $3.7 million in 2013 and grossed $7 million during its entire run.
The Star has also already outgrossed The Young Messiah, which had some flashbacks to the Nativity and its aftermath; that film earned only $6.5 million last year.
The Star also managed to have one of the ten best openings for a “faith-based” film:
- 2004 — The Passion of the Christ — $83.8 million
- 2014 — Son of God — $25.6 million
- 2014 — Heaven Is for Real — $22.5 million
- 2017 — The Shack — $16.2 million
- 2016 — Miracles from Heaven — $14.8 million
- 2016 — Risen — $11.8 million
- 2015 — War Room — $11.4 million
- 2016 — Ben-Hur — $11.2 million
- 2011 — Soul Surfer — $10.6 million
- 2017 — The Star — $10.0 million
- 2014 — God’s Not Dead — $9.2 million
- 2011 — Courageous — $9.1 million
As far as the film’s total gross to date is concerned, this is where The Star ranks among Bible and/or Jesus films released in the past 40 years:
- 2004 — The Passion of the Christ — $370.8 million
- 1998 — The Prince of Egypt — $101.4 million
- 2014 — Noah — $101.2 million
- 2014 — Exodus: Gods and Kings — $65 million
- 2014 — Son of God — $59.7 million
- 2017 — The Shack — $57.4 million
- 2009 — Year One — $43.3 million
- 2006 — The Nativity Story — $37.6 million
- 2016 — Risen — $36.9 million
- 1981 — History of the World, Part I — $31.7 million
- 2016 — Hail, Caesar! — $30.5 million
- 2016 — Ben-Hur — $26.4 million
- 2002 — Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie — $25.6 million
- 1979 — Monty Python’s Life of Brian — $20 million
- 1980 — Wholly Moses! — $14.2 million
- 2006 — One Night with the King — $13.4 million
- 2017 — The Star — $10.0 million
- 1988 — The Last Temptation of Christ — $8.4 million
- 2016 — The Young Messiah — $6.5 million
- 1985 — King David — $5.1 million
- 2003 — The Gospel of John — $4.1 million
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Box-office observers have proposed a few reasons for The Star’s weak debut, among them the fact that it was competing for family audiences with Wonder, a live-action drama that opened to $27.1 million this weekend. Both films, as it happens, were co-produced by family-friendly Walden Media, but they were released by different studios.
The question now is whether The Star can stay afloat during the five weeks between now and Christmas Day, or whether it will fade from view as animated heavyweights like Disney-Pixar’s Coco and Fox’s Ferdinand claim their piece of the holiday action.1
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1. Incidentally, voice actors from The Star turn up in both of the season’s other animated films, as well. Gina Rodriguez and Anthony Anderson are among the co-stars of Ferdinand, and Gabriel Iglesias can be heard in that film as well as Coco, too.
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