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The Star | 17 NOV 2017 | Sony Pictures Animation | Twerking doves and stealing Lone Ranger jokes in the trailer on pg. 5 | Re-releasing this year on December 7 & 8 (don't ask)

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On 7/26/2017 at 2:39 PM, slambros said:

 

Oh, you'd be surprised about the kind of prayers God answers for me and other Christians. He answers all kinds of prayers if they are in line with his will!

 

Here's a story that is relevant to film. I liked a movie that came out a few months ago. It was The Case for Christ, which I found to be a huge step up for Christian filmmaking in recent years.

 

I noticed that, while it was a deserving film, its domestic box office was fairly lacking for a wide release. That's when I got an idea.

 

I prayed to God about the film's gross. I told him that if the film failed to make it past $15 million, then I would campaign the film for the Best Overlooked Feature award at the coming Boffy Awards, and if it cleared past $15 million, then I would be happy that the film made the amount of money that it did and leave it at that. I told him that it was his decision to make about the gross and that I would trust in him and his will.

 

Do you want to know what God did?

 

God answered my prayer and gradually halted the film's growth into the higher end of $14 million. In other words, the film ended its run just shy of $15 million.

 

To me, this is surely a miracle. With the film being eligible for Best Overlooked Feature, I am going to campaign as hard as I can for the film to receive, at the very least, that one nomination. Because when it does, people of the box office forum community will look back on the deserving film they looked over and decide to watch what is, in my opinion, the faith-based answer to great journalism films like Spotlight.

 

God doesn't have certain things he worries about. He's big enough to be concerned with everything. Even a forum site like this one.

 

Wow...  I have a hard time believing you are not trolling.  This is so either funny or sad, can't figure out which one just yet. 

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13 hours ago, Blankments said:

Yikes the animation on this looks worse than Sausage Party. Story doesn't look to be that good either

 

@slambros really appreciate your posts in this thread. A good positive outlook to have that we don't see often on these boards for any movies, let alone movies like these.

 

Thank you! Every film deserves a chance in my opinion.

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11 hours ago, langer said:

 

Wow...  I have a hard time believing you are not trolling.  This is so either funny or sad, can't figure out which one just yet. 

 

I can promise you that I am not joking or trolling. This is an experience that I've had and how you choose to feel about it is up to you. But I'm glad you took the time to read it!

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@slambros Have you been following the Faith based  films since around 2014 when Heaven was release.  If so, have you been ranking them?  Care to share?  Any opinions on any of the BO performances from some of these movies??http://www.boxofficemojo.com/genres/chart/?id=christian.htm&sort=date&order=DESC&p=.htm

Here is a list of some of them I noticed when following the box office.

The Case for Christ

The Shack

The Resurrection of Gavin Stone

God's Not Dead 2

Miracles from Heaven

The Young Messiah

Risen
The Letters

Woodlawn

Captive

90 Minutes from Heaven

War Room

Faith of Our Fathers

Little Boy

Do You Believe?

Left Behind

The Identical

Persecuted

Mom's Night Out

Heaven is For Real

God's Not Dead

Son of God

 

 

...but of course I am also thinking along the lines of Noah and Exodus.  Am I leaving any out that were not from the BOM link?

 

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14 hours ago, Matrix4You said:

@slambros Have you been following the Faith based  films since around 2014 when Heaven was release.  If so, have you been ranking them?  Care to share?  Any opinions on any of the BO performances from some of these movies??

 

Faith Based films in general have good earning chances when handled by an adequate distributor because they are often budgeted pretty low.

 

If I had to rank the ones that I have seen from that list, I think it would end up like this:

 

1) The Case for Christ
2) Heaven is for Real
3) War Room
4) God's Not Dead
5) Mom's Night Out
6) Little Boy
7) Son of God
8) God's Not Dead 2

 

The Case for Christ is the faith based film that I have chosen as my favorite out of the recent ones, with unexpectantly nuanced writing. The film was only released in America, but it made 14.7 Million on a 3 Million budget, which I believe to be a respectable success for a sparingly marketed film.

 

I remember rooting for Heaven is for Real to beat Transendence (starring Johnny Depp) at the box office. In fact, I think that that was the weekend that struck my interest in following the box office each weekend.

 

War Room is the biggest Faith Based success story as of late, as well as a major moment in my life. My father was closely associated with a homeless ministry at that time and we invited the ministry's pastor and other friends to see the movie; the theater was packed that day, and our group was separated into two different theaters displaying the same film. War Room was to be the first film that the pastor had seen in years. On the box office side, the film caught derbygoers off guard when it managed to secure the number one position on the box office chart in its second weekend, and stayed there with a positive 17.9% change from about $9 million to about $13 million in its 3rd weekend. When the film ended its phenomenal domestic run with $67,790,117 garnered from less than 2,000 theaters, two things were somewhat evident to me: the right film can attract people that don't normally go to the movies, and God surely has a watchful eye on the American box office, with certain successes and disappointments happening for reasons beyond our understanding.

 

God's Not Dead, with its March 2014 release, was well positioned to be an appealing alternative to the controversial source-material-ignoring Noah, which had opened a week or two before. And appealing alternative, it was; in addition to having an intriguing storytelling approach with its multiple character viewpoints, the film was a bona-fide event in which me and my father were  struggling to find two seats together in our auditorium.

 

Mom's Night Out was faith based filmmaking's prophetic answer to Bad Moms and Girls Trip from before those movies even came out, in addition to being a genuinely fun comedy that earned more than twice its $5 million budget. Interestingly, the featured cast includes notable names such as Patricia Heaton (The Middle) and Sean Astin (Lord of the Rings).

 

Little Boy (available to view on Netfilx), to me, I admit, was fairly pretentious as it tried a touch too hard to be a prestige film. However, it certainly had its moments, but it was one of many faith based films to end up shy of a budget that was bigger than it needed to be. Interestingly, a Bollywood film company decided to adapt this film into a Hindi war film titled Tubelight.

 

Son of God ranked low on my list, not because it was bad by any means, but because it was directly pulled from History's excellent Bible miniseries. Anything above a $15 million opening weekend was a win for the film (quoted from Box Office Mojo), but it ended up with $25 million OW and a $50 million, which was a huge success all things considered.

 

Which brings us to God's Not Dead 2. It ranks last because, besides some good performances, it was simply a poor quality film with boring or out of place dialogue despite its very real subject matter. I admire the effort that Faith Based filmmaking took to create a franchise, but considering how Faith Based films are a franchise in and of themselves for distributors such as TriStar and Pure Flix, it just felt unnecessary and groanworthy at a time when originality is highly sought after (to be honest, faith based films usually differentiate well between one another in this day and age). Much of the first film's audience must have thought the same way, as the sequel only made about half of what the first one did.

 

There are also films that aren't necessarily based completely on Faith, but address it in a great way. One recent example of this is Hacksaw Ridge. Through the war film, Mel Gibson gives glory directly to God as he tells the story of the devout pacifist Desmond T. Doss as he follows God's direction in order to rescue fellow soldiers from a harsh WW2 battlefield without a single weapon to defend himself. The film was great, but I wish it had made a bit more at the box office. However, I doubt that the film's direct goal was a profit.

 

Another recent film to address Christianity is Silence. The pastor of my church personally recommended the film to the congregation back when it was in theaters, which is a greater reward than the disappointing box office sum that led the film to win the Best Overlooked Feature award at the most recent Boffy awards.

 

There are also many recent hits, such as Risen, Miracles of Heaven (featuring one of my favorite Walking Dead actresses, Brighton Sharbino), and The Shack, that I have yet to see but still want to somewhere down the line.

 

I also want to mention The Resurrection of Gavin Stone, a Christian comedy that was a part of an experimental release that put the film on streaming/VOD the same day as its theatrical release. The release strategy didn't quite work out for the decently-reviewed film, unfortunately.

 

Say what you will about Faith Based films, but if you have a group of Christian filmgoers watch one of these films, you will be graced with some of the best audience reactions you will ever experience as a filmgoer. They might not be a hit with critics, but the best and most pressing ones tend to have an impact right where it matters.

 

(I apologize for the length.)

Edited by slambros
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19 minutes ago, filmlover said:

Wonder will probably move from November 17 to a different week now since it seems like most obvious "weak link" among Justice League and The Star.

I'm curious if The Star can coexist with JL.

Edited by YourMother
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Nah, it'll be fine opening against Justice League and within a week of Coco... just so long as Sony isn't expecting a big gross (which they clearly don't seem to be with this positioning).

 

I think it'll perform along the same lines as The Nativity Story in 2006: soft opening followed by stellar legs leading up to Christmas.

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4 hours ago, YourMother said:

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Say what you will about the film's prospects, but this is an aesthetically pleasing poster that continues this year's trend of good film posters. This is the kind of poster that gets families into the auditorium.

 

4 hours ago, YourMother said:

Holy Shit! It moved and is going against JL on OW now.

 

This is going to surprise people when it comes out alongside Justice League.

Edited by slambros
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2 hours ago, Jonwo said:

A week before Coco, Sony really has a death wish for this film.

Correction: 5 days before Coco. This is likely three situations imo.

1.) Sony is sensing low confidence in Coco from Disney.

2.) Judging by the poster, perhaps they'll market more towards the religious crowds.

3.) Sony knows no matter what it won't be a monster hit but try to get some legs over the holiday season!

 

1 hour ago, slambros said:

This is going to surprise people when it comes out alongside Justice League.

Depending on how dark Justice League is it could be good counterprogramming, however I'm expecting JL to attract families too.

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3 minutes ago, YourMother said:

Depending on how dark Justice League is it could be good counterprogramming, however I'm expecting JL to attract families too.

Considering the Back to School campaign they had with Wal-Mart and various other kid-oriented campaigns, I think JL is going to take the kids and families away from this big time. 

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2 minutes ago, MrGamer2558 said:

Considering the Back to School campaign they had with Wal-Mart and various other kid-oriented campaigns, I think JL is going to take the kids and families away from this big time. 

Yeah. It seems judging by the first poster, they might try to aim for a more religious angle now.

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11 minutes ago, YourMother said:

Correction: 5 days before Coco. This is likely three situations imo.

1.) Sony is sensing low confidence in Coco from Disney.

2.) Judging by the poster, perhaps they'll market more towards the religious crowds.

3.) Sony knows no matter what it won't be a monster hit but try to get some legs over the holiday season!

 

Depending on how dark Justice League is it could be good counterprogramming, however I'm expecting JL to attract families too.

2. and 3. make sense but not 1. and the fourth situation is that they don't want to face Daddy Home's 2 face on.

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