Christian Movie ‘The Forge’ Soars into Top 5, Earns Perfect A+ CinemaScore
- Michael Foust Crosswalk Headlines Contributor
- Updated Aug 26, 2024
A Christian movie cracked the Top 5 over the weekend and edged a new big-budget film as fans gave it a perfect A+ CinemaScore grade. The Forge (PG), the latest movie from filmmaking brothers Alex and Stephen Kendrick, opened the weekend at No. 5 with an estimated gross of $6.6 million even though it played in only 1,818 theaters—a significantly lower count than the four films above it that showed in at least 3,000 theaters. Made for only $5 million, The Forge beat the new $50 million budget movie The Crow, which grossed $4.6 million and finished No. 8, according to estimates.
The $3,630 per-theater average for The Forge was No. 3 among all movies.
Meanwhile, the A+ CinemaScore grade made director Alex Kendrick only the fourth director in film history to earn a perfect score, joining fellow faith-based filmmaker Jon Erwin, who also has four movies with A+ CinemaScores. The other Kendrick movies that scored an A+ were Overcomer (2019), War Room (2015) and Courageous (2011).
CinemaScore is a polling service that asks fans to rate movies they've seen on opening weekend. Perfect scores are rare. The other two new movies this weekend, The Crow and Blink Twice, earned B grades.
The movie tells the story of an irresponsible young man who transforms into a responsible individual under the mentorship of a wise older mentor.
Stephen Kendrick, the producer of The Forge, said he and his brother judge a film's success not on box office numbers but on its impact on souls.
"The world has their box office numbers, and if that represents souls and lives, then yes and amen to reaching as many people as possible with the gospel," Kendrick told Crosswalk Headlines. "For us, one of the issues is: Did we obey what God told us to do? And did we leave it all in the field and give Him a worthy offering?
"Big picture, though, we're hoping and praying that the church will be strengthened, the lost will be saved, the gospel will go forth," he added. "It's hard to kind of calculate and measure that, but when you hear from people around the world sharing how the movies have changed their lives, it gives us a little foretaste of maybe what's to come."
Related: 4 Things Families Should Know about the Latest Kendrick Brothers Movie, 'The Forge'
WATCH: The Forge - Official Trailer (HD)
Photo Credit: ©Sony
Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
