The biopic about the boxing great dramatically underperforms other recent faith-based films.
Ticket sales of less than $3 million at the weekend box office cannot be what Affirm Films was hoping for from Big George Foreman: The Miraculous Story of the Once and Future Heavyweight Champion of the World. In fact, the studio's C-suite must be bitterly disappointed, having chosen a particularly wide release for the picture: more than 3,000 theaters, as we reported here.
It did not even manage to land in the Top-10 from Friday through Sunday, according to Box Office Mojo, finishing in 11th place overall, with a take of $2.92 million. The poor performance comes on the heels of stellar showings from two other Christian films earlier this year: Jesus Revolution opened in third place back in February with a whopping $15.8 million inaugural weekend, and His Only Son - an indie picture with a $250,000 production budget - brought in $5.5 million the first weekend it opened in March. Making it even worse, those two movies released in just 2,475 and 1,920 theaters, respectively.
It is hard to see how Big George Foreman, which stars Khris Davis and Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker and tells the life story of the eponymous heavyweight boxer-turned-preacher, redeems itself. After a debut performance like this, the film is almost certain to drop a significant number of theaters next weekend, making it particularly challenging to change its disappointing box office trajectory.