Get ready.
The box office will be Bible thumping this weekend.. holy times are high, movie theaters will be filled with the faithful, praising Jesus and fearing the almighty, who flooded the world and forever promised not to with a rainbow. And then flooded the world OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN.
Forget the actual ‘story’ of Noah for a second, or anything factual, or anything scientific, or any reality of it at all.. Instead. It’s TIME FOR NOAH. Brother Noah.. And his Ark.
We know this so far: The movie NOAH cost a lot of cold, hard cash to create. It faced a steady stream of criticism from the hardest of hardcore Christians, those hell-bent (no pun intended) on making sure Noah stayed true to the ‘real’ story from the Bible. It’s not in box offices around the world, and America.. And now Darren Aronofsky’s movie is making big inroads with the faithful, doing especially great with Catholic Hispanics and any town USA that has a strong Christian population.. You can read more about those Friday night facts from the HOLLYWOOD REPORTER..
Experts who get paid to run numbers on these types of things figure that NOAH will earn about $40 mil for the week—far less than it cost to make. But then again.. Sunday afternoon sales could be ALMIGHTY higher than expected. Just imagine if Father NamethatPriest rants and raves from the pulpit about this film.. The fervent will be filled with the holy ghost, enough perhaps to go streaming into theaters with friends and families instead of roast beef dinners at the family diner. Most movies have a date night like Friday or Saturday registering that largest numbers.. But just like PASSION OF THE CHRIST, NOAH could be huge on Sunday, bloody Sunday..
But for now, we only know this: NOAH is being released in 3,567 theaters strong. SABOTAGE is next with 2,486. And just judging from early numbers, Arnold Schwarzenegger will not ‘sabotage’ NOAH, but instead bomb huge at the box…