Stephen Jones

In September of 2015, the Evangelical movie War Room sat atop the American box office, marking a unique trend among movie theaters nationwide: low-budget Christian movies raking in millions. Even though the Christian movie is not new to cinema, the amount of its recent success is. As with many things related to religion, these films have garnered controversial and polarizing opinions from critics and average moviegoers alike, and perhaps it is this contrast in attitudes that is garnering large amounts of attention; but before drawing any drastic conclusions, it is necessary to look at the statistics surrounding these films.

Three films in particular have boasted large box office success despite their meager production budget in the past couple of years: God’s Not Dead, Heaven is for Real, and War Room. The average production cost of these three movies is under $6 million, and they currently possess an estimated average of $63.8 million at the box office. Taking these numbers into account, these Evangelical films have definitely struck a chord with a portion of the general public, but critics have not exactly held the same enthusiasm. According to Rotten Tomatoes, a website that calculates the percentage of movie critics that gave a movie a favorable review, the average rating of these films is a disappointing 33%.

Although these movies have been critically panned, creating a Christian movie seems to be a very lucrative business proposition. With the production cost only a fraction of the modern Hollywood blockbuster, the risk in making a cheap Evangelical movie is fairly low. If a director can produce a movie appealing to churches across the country, finding a church van or bus in a
movie theatre parking lot will not be a difficult task. Much to the chagrin to the majority of critics and large sections of the general public, as long as filmmakers are able to rake in millions of dollars, the future production of Evangelical movies is indeed a certainty.