He is risen indeed. One week before Easter, three of the top 10 titles at the box office this weekend were faith-based stories about the life of Jesus Christ, including Angel Studios’ animated “The King of Kings” as well as “The Chosen: Last Supper” Parts 2 and 3, as released by Fathom Entertainment.
“The King of Kings” opened to $19.3 million this weekend from 3,200 screens, finishing No. 2 behind “A Minecraft Movie,” which had a strong second weekend and only dropped 50 percent for another staggering $80.6 million haul, bringing its domestic total to $280.9 million. (Jason Momoa looks a little like Jesus, right?)
And for “The Chosen,” Part 3 of Season 5 opened this weekend and finished sixth, bringing in $6 million domestic, while Part 2 held on to the No. 10 spot and made $932,000. To date through its third weekend in theaters, all three sets of episodes have grossed a combined $36.3 million, including $19.3 million for Part 1. This coming weekend for Easter Sunday, all three parts will be available in theaters for one ticket price so that you can binge the entire season in theaters.
Let’s start with how big a performance “The King of Kings” is for Angel Studios. The $19.3 million is just shy of the opening for “Sound of Freedom,” which of course wound up grossing $250 million worldwide. It’d be a surprise if this animated family film about Jesus did that well, but it will easily become Angel Studios’ second-highest grossing title ever, and with an A+ CinemaScore, a grade which only 128 films have earned and one of only five animated films not made by Disney or Pixar to do so, it should carry well.
Angel touted that it’s the biggest opening for an animated faith-based movie ever, beating out “The Prince of Egypt” about the story of Moses from 1998. That film opened to $14.5 million, which with inflation would’ve been $28.3 million, but it wound up making $218 million worldwide, so perhaps a similarly lofty goal for “The King of Kings” would not be a miracle.
“The King of Kings” boasts an impressive voice cast including Oscar Isaac as Jesus Christ, Pierce Brosnan, Kenneth Branagh, Uma Thurman, Forest Whitaker, Jim Cummings, and Ben Kingsley, all of whom Angel touted in its marketing. Angel also heavily pushed the film through social media and framed it as an influencer-driven event for families. But Angel also talked up its Angel Guild in its messaging, making the case that the film performed simply because its many Angel Guild members had already seen and endorsed the film and were in some cases literally invested in its success.
Angel is planning another animated Biblical epic called “Young David” that it hopes will have a similar level of success.
For “The Chosen,” it’s remarkable to see how the series has grown theatrically and how big of a title it has become for Fathom. While originally an Angel Studios release, Fathom has been the theatrical partner for creator Dallas Jenkins’ show since 2021.
Fathom released the first two episodes of Season 5 to an opening of $11.7 million, which was ahead of Season 4’s opening of $7.4 million. But Fathom learned a thing or two for the rollout of Season 5 and has paced the rollout each week such that people who didn’t see the first two episodes in Week 1 would have the option of bingeing all the episodes to that point, and it will culminate in the Easter weekend binge-a-thon available via 500 theaters. “Events” may not be in Fathom’s company name any longer, but it still thinks about all of its showings as event screenings to optimize turnout and per screen average.
If there’s someone who should look at how “The Chosen” is still creating event buzz week after week, it’s Sam Mendes and his four Beatles movies, which Sony intends to release all in April 2028. Whether those films are dropped all at once or spaced out with one each week of the month, it will need to be marketed as an event that will make people want to come back each week or to binge all four movies together for a single ticket price.
John Lennon once said The Beatles were more popular than Jesus, but we’ll see if that ends up being true.
