Box office: Redeeming Love drops 48% in its second week

Just a quick note on how Redeeming Love did in its second week at the box office.

The film, which sets the biblical story of Hosea and Gomer during the California Gold Rush, earned an estimated $1.9 million this weekend.

This represents a drop of 47.6% from the film’s opening last week, despite the fact that it played in slightly more theatres (1,963 this week compared to 1,903 last week).

It was the steepest drop of any film in wide release. Scream dropped 39.8%, while all other films in the top ten had drops below 22% — or, in the case of American Underdog, Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Licorice Pizza, went up compared to last week.

Even so, with no new movies in wide release, Redeeming Love held on to its position as the 4th-highest-grossing movie of the week, behind Spider-Man: No Way Home ($11 million), Scream ($7.4 million), and Sing 2 ($4.8 million).

Moviegoing as a whole went down this week. As Tom Brueggeman notes at IndieWire, this was the slowest weekend at the box office in over eight months:

In its absence (and without any other wide opening), the three day total [for all movies combined] will come to only $35 million. That makes it the weakest weekend since May 21-23 last year, just before “A Quiet Place II” opened and theaters started seeing steady improvement. . . .

This weekend only grossed 43 percent of what the same date did in 2020, pre-COVID. That weekend had the Super Bowl to contend with (two weeks later this year) and, as usual, only minor distributor interest in launching new titles. The storm, though it reduced sales by perhaps $5 million this weekend, is far less a factor than the game normally is.

With this weekend added, our four-week rolling comparison (a far better gauge than any one week) to the same period two years ago is now at 45 percent. Obviously a lack of titles is a major reason, but the shortfall also reflects an overall drop in performance for most films compared to what previous results would have been.

I believe this would be the lowest four-week rolling comparison since The Suicide Squad opened on August 6. Brueggeman said the average was 44% then.

Prior to that, I think you’d have to go back to mid-June — to a point between the releases of A Quiet Place Part II and F9 — to find an even lower four-week rolling comparison (when three weeks were between 42% and 45% and the fourth week fell to 23%).

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Here is how Redeeming Love currently ranks at the North American box office next to other Bible-themed movies that have played in theatres over the past 43 years:

1. 2004 — The Passion of the Christ — $370.8 million
2. 1998 — The Prince of Egypt — $101.4 million
3. 2014 — Noah — $101.2 million
4. 2014 — Exodus: Gods and Kings — $65 million
5. 2014 — Son of God — $59.7 million
6. 2017 — The Shack — $57.4 million
7. 2009 — Year One — $43.3 million
8. 2017 — The Star — $40.9 million
9. 2006 — The Nativity Story — $37.6 million
10. 2016 — Risen — $36.9 million
11. 1981 — History of the World, Part I — $31.7 million
12. 2016 — Hail, Caesar! — $30.5 million
13. 2016 — Ben-Hur — $26.4 million
14. 2002 — Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie — $25.6 million
15. 1979 — Monty Python’s Life of Brian — $20 million
16. 2018 — Paul, Apostle of Christ — $17.6 million
17. 1980 — Wholly Moses! — $14.2 million
18. 2021 — Christmas with The Chosen: The Messengers — $13.7 Million
19. 2006 — One Night with the King — $13.4 million
20. 1988 — The Last Temptation of Christ — $8.4 million
21. 2022 — Redeeming Love — $6.5 million
22. 2016 — The Young Messiah — $6.5 million
23. 1985 — King David — $5.1 million
24. 2018 — Samson — $4.7 million
25. 2003 — The Gospel of John — $4.1 million
26. 2014 — The Song — $1.0 million
27. 2007 — The Ten Commandments — $952,820
28. 2018 — Mary Magdalene — $124,741