A Strong Follow-Up Performance at the Box Office for "The King of Kings"

The animated story of Jesus' life delivers a particularly good second weekend in theaters.

The Jesus Character appears in a scene from the animated feature film "The King of Kings." Image: Angel Studios.

Theatrically released movies typically experience a drop of 40% to 50% or more in ticket revenue from opening weekend to weekend number two, so the fact that The King of Kings fell only nine percent in its second weekend makes clear what an impressive start it is off to. The film brought in more than $17.5 million from Friday through Sunday, according to The Numbers website, putting it in third place overall at the North American box office.

That is down a spot from its inaugural weekend on the big screen, when it delivered one of the best opening performances - $19.3 million - of any movie in the faith-based genre for years now. Christian Film Blog had speculated at the time that it was likely to generate somewhere in the $50-million range when all was said and done, but we clearly missed the mark: The King of Kings has already crossed the $45-million threshold after only ten days in release!

That is an impressive number indeed, and this picture from distributor Angel Studios - which got a top rating from opening-night audiences surveyed by CinemaScore - is likely going to challenge for a place in the Top-5 all-time grossing movies in the genre, needing to get to about $68 million to enter that group, according to data from Box Office Mojo.