It's a 10-yearly thing. Christians can only get excited one every decade.

1994: The Santa Clause
2004: The Passion of the Christ
2014: God's Not Dead, The Son of God, Heaven is for Real

I know. But I still went with it.

Gosh is it just me or has no other movie this millennium enjoyed as much controversy prior to release as The Passion of the Christ. Maybe I am spacing on some other contenders.

Yea

They need to reboot The Passion of the Christ. Maybe Platinum Dunes / Bay? Make it a trilogy with some commercial director at the helm.

It's Obama's fault

They tried to, and it made $59m.

It's not just you. Good grief, that film got so much publicity from all the "Is it anti-Semitic?"/"Is it too violent?"/"Can audiences handle it?"/"It's like a religious revival in the cinemas!" hubbub. There hasn't been anything like it since.

Low-budget Christian movies are weird as hell (no pun intended). The school where I student-taught did a retreat where they showed clips from a horrid direct-to-video Christian movie, one of which inadvertently taught every student in that room how to be a master beer pong player while trying to send a message about the evils of peer pressure.

They need to do it as a found footage film.

In all seriousness, I'd fucking love that.

Which is actually very good considering it was just a rehashed TV show on the big screen.

It will be a trilogy, Jesus won't even get crucified until the third picture. The first two will spend at least 50% of their runtime world building in order to set up the spinoffs (first up: 2019's SAMSON and ANDREW: THE FIRST DISCIPLE)

I think Guardians is more likely to be #1 that weekend than The Identical. The trailer looks too bland to hook anyone, and it doesn't look Jesus-y enough to hook a large Christian audience.

Looking back, the "controversy" was all but a marketing tactic. Marketing agents lobbied the media with press releases and advertorials highlighting the allegedly violent and anti-Semitic angles of the film. Prime spots on the news media, both online and offline, were bought to sell the film. Trolls were hired to perpetuate the controversy and WOM. This somehow worked for the film. But I don't think the "controversy" they were selling would work the same way again today when people are smarter.

Still feel good about this. In terms of drops, worst case scenario for Guardians I think is 20% this coming weekend and 50% the weekend after, and that still puts it at about $6.9 million. I see no way in hell that The Identical comes close to that, for the reasons mentioned above plus the fact that not even when the Game Stands Tall did that well when it had a more appealing look and a stronger studio.