The three days
Friday was $264,569, about $215 a theater. Saturday, Halloween, was $266,503, up less than 1 percent, about $217 a theater. Sunday was $226,528, down 15 percent, about $184 a theater. The weekend did not build. It held Friday into Saturday and then faded. Saturday was the biggest day by $1,934. The opening is already 100 percent of the reported domestic total, which is what The Numbers prints when a film has only one weekend on the books.
Mojo’s daily table ranks Friday 17th, Saturday 14th, and Sunday 11th. Those ranks move as larger titles clear, and they are marked as estimates. A revision of a few tens of thousands of dollars would sit inside a $757,600 weekend without changing the shape of the run. A revision of the theater count would. Until Monday’s actuals replace the estimate flags, 1,230 is the booking both sites are using.
Same partner, a different product
Roadside’s first Sight & Sound film was A Great Awakening, a narrative drama about George Whitefield and Benjamin Franklin. Mojo lists that opening, April 3, at $2,041,328 from 1,289 theaters, about $1,584 a screen. The domestic total finished at $8,149,028. Deadline reported an A+ CinemaScore and a No. 6 weekend, and quoted Roadside co-president Howard Cohen saying exit polls pulled both faith viewers and history buffs. The top DMA was Harrisburg/Lancaster/York, the home market for Sight & Sound’s Lancaster house.
Joshua Live opened with 59 fewer theaters than that film, about 95 percent of the earlier map, and took about 37 percent of the earlier opening dollars. Divide the two openings by their theater counts and the per-screen gap is larger still: $616 against $1,584. The Numbers lists Joshua Live under Concert/Performance. A Great Awakening was a drama. The partnership is the same. The product is not. A filmed Jericho asks the audience to buy a stage night that already runs in Lancaster and Branson. A Whitefield picture asked them to buy a movie.
How the faith Fridays look next to it
The recent faith chart has other Fridays in the same corridor, and none of them are a filmed stage show. Angel and the Badman opened October 9 to $2,115,116 from 2,263 theaters, about $935 a screen. Flywheel: Ignition of the Soul opened October 16 to $188,749 from 554 theaters, about $341 a screen. Joshua Live sits between them in dollars and above Flywheel in theaters. It is below Badman’s opening money with about half the rooms. The comparison that matters for Roadside is still A Great Awakening, because that is the only prior Sight & Sound theatrical on the same distribution deal.
Sight & Sound’s company line, when the date was announced, said more than 1.5 million people a year attend the Lancaster and Branson houses, and that the move into features had already debuted at No. 2. Take that ranking as the company’s own. What the weekend establishes is the booking that replaced the missing screen count: 1,230 theaters, $616 a screen, and a three-day total that is already the whole reported domestic gross. The next chart will show whether those theaters stay booked, and whether a filmed stage show that opened under its predecessor can add a second weekend that the first Sight & Sound film still had room for.
