The Best Christmas Pageant Ever continued to overperform at the box office over the weekend, driven by positive word of mouth that propelled the faith-based film back into the Top 5 -- prompting one entertainment website to call it a "miracle." The Dallas Jenkins-directed movie finished fifth with a gross of $3.2 million in its fourth weekend and bounced back into the Top 5 movies after falling to sixth the previous weekend. During its first two weekends, it was No. 3.
More impressive, though, was the movie's "hold" data -- a Hollywood term that describes how well a film maintains its box office earnings from one weekend to the next. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever was down only 6.1 percent Thanksgiving weekend compared to the previous weekend in an industry that often sees drops of 40 to 60 percent. Gladiator II, for example, fell 43.6 percent, while Wicked dropped 28 percent compared to their previous weekends.
"The holiday season is all about miracles, and The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is continuing to deliver an almighty one at the box office," Collider said Monday.
It has grossed $32 million. Jenkins, the director, is best known as the creator and director of The Chosen.
Its last three weekends, in fact, have produced box office data rarely seen in Hollywood, dropping only 38 percent from its second to fourth weekends. By comparison, Inside Out 2 -- the top-grossing film of 2024 -- fell 70 percent from its second to fourth weekends.
Kevin Downes, producer and CEO of Kingdom Story Company, the studio behind the film, attributed its success to positive word of mouth. At Rotten Tomatoes, 91 percent of critics and 97 percent of viewers said they liked the film.
"Word of mouth spreads like wildfire. And I think you're seeing that with Christmas Pageant," Downes told Crosswalk Headlines. "... Our movies are all about hope and giving everybody hope."
The film, he said, "is just really resonating with audiences."
"Dallas Jenkins did a great job of adapting the book, which obviously has a huge fan base," Downes said. "It's got the fun which people expect. But it's got a lot of heart. On top of that, it's the start of the Christmas season. There hasn't been a movie that really, truly celebrates the true meaning of Christmas in a way that Best Christmas Pageant Ever does. People are keen on bringing their friends and family and just having that conversation, that celebration of what the true meaning of Christmas is and why Christmas exists, to begin with."
The film, he said, offers moviegoers "something that is just different" than other films in the theaters.
"The goal," he said, "was to kind of have this timeless Christmas classic that people can revisit again and again."
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is based on a children's book of the same name and tells the story of six unruly siblings, the Herdmans, who unexpectedly win roles in a small-town church's Christmas play.
Photo Credit: ©Allen Fraser/Lionsgate
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.
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