This biopic also reaches an important revenue milestone in its third weekend in release, even as it continues to underperform expectations.
The life story of former heavyweight boxer George Foreman brought in $264,000 from Friday through Sunday, according to early numbers from Box Office Mojo. That puts Big George Foreman: The Miraculous Story of the Once and Future Heavyweight Champion of the World in 19th place overall and pushes its total gross ticket revenue thus far over the $5 million mark.
After 17 days in release, however, the bosses at Sony Pictures' Affirm Films - the faith-based studio behind this picture - cannot be happy with its performance. Two data points should make clear why. First, for the sake of comparison, the recent faith-based hit Jesus Revolution generated three times as much in its opening weekend alone and, second, even though Big George Foreman landed in the Top-20 this weekend, its per-theater-revenue of $202 was lower than any other film in the Top-35; the next closest more than doubled that, according to Box Office Mojo, at $434 per theater.
In other words, the movie has done poorly, which comes as a surprise when you consider it features a compelling story about a well-known and beloved public figure who is a strong Christian, it was made by a big Hollywood studio with a slew of hit faith-based movies to its credit, the filmmakers put together a strong cast - including Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker in a supporting role - and they spent good money on both the production and marketing budgets, though we have no concrete figures for either.
The only thing missing that we can see is that the film has no prominent Christian actors in the cast, which almost certainly would have helped to some degree. Nevertheless, it is hard to understand why it has underperformed to this degree, and we at Christian Film Blog have not been able work out what went wrong.