A religious movie is storming to the top of the American film box office right now. No, no, it’s not Noah, the disaster epic directed by Black Swan’s Darren Aronofsky with a star-studded cast of Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connolly, Emma Watson and Ray Winstone. It's a film called God's Not Dead, and – we’re not going to lie – it looks awful. Despite this, and the fact it only opened in 730 screens across America, it made $8.6m in its first weekend, putting itself firmly into fifth place in the box office. To put that in perspective – it made double per screen that the Muppets movie made.
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And, unless the job of the trailer is to misrepresent the film as something nowhere near as good as the actual film, that’s pretty good going, because the trailer looks like a parody. You’ll recognise Kevin Sorbo, who plays the anti-Christian lecturer, from ’90s series Hercules, and you’ll, of course, remember Dean Cain from his time as Superman in that other butch ’90s series.
And if you’re fond of spending a hungover day watching Duck Dynasty (guys, have you not heard of True Detective, Mad Fat Diary, Mad Men, Game Of Thrones, Orange Is The New Black... or, just, like, going out and enjoying the actual world?), you’ll recognise Willie and Korie Robertson, the children of Phil Robertson, the reality show’s lead who recently got into trouble over homophobic and racist comments.
Kevin Sorbo recently told right-wing American newscaster Bill O’Reilly, ‘Every movie creates controversy and some of this movie will as well. What you’re doing is getting the scientific viewpoint from an atheist, but you’re also getting a scientific viewpoint from the Christians.’
Not exactly brimming with star power, a lot of God's Not Dead’s success is being put down to the fact it’s been pre-sold to church-goers, marketed directly through churches. But the writers, Cary Solomon and Chuck Konzelman have, perhaps inevitably, put the success of the film down to God. ‘We always pray first. And we felt really called to write this piece. But in terms of the response to it, what can we say? It’s all the Holy Spirit.’
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.