How the weekend split
The Numbers and Mojo agree on the dailies through Tuesday, October 20. Friday was $65,365, about $118 a theater. Saturday was $68,824, up 5 percent, a gain of $3,459, about $6 a theater. Sunday was $54,560, down 21 percent. The drop from Saturday to Sunday was larger than the rise from Friday to Saturday.
Monday was $20,208, down 63 percent, about $36 a theater. Tuesday was $29,046. Through Tuesday the domestic total on both sites is $238,003. The opening weekend is 79 percent of that. The Numbers then lists Wednesday, October 21, at $18,000, a round figure, and a running total of $256,003. Mojo’s daily table still stops at Tuesday, and the days it has posted are not marked as estimates. The total both sites share is $238,003. Every one of those days is still counted at 554 theaters. The map has not been cut. The rooms that remain are doing weekday business in the tens of dollars.
The same average, a different week
The weekend chart already has another film at that average. Angel and the Badman grossed $433,220 from 1,270 theaters, about $341 a screen. That was a second weekend, after exhibitors dropped the western from 2,263 theaters to 1,270. Flywheel reached the same per-theater number on the Friday it opened. Badman’s opening average, the weekend before, was $935. Daniel and the Fiery Furnace opened on September 18 at $2,166 a theater. Those are the first-weekend figures for this fall’s other faith releases. $341 is where Badman landed after it had lost 993 screens.
The comparison Affirm invited is The Forge. When the studio dated this remake, Deadline reported that The Forge had opened at No. 1 in Brazil and reported $9 million there. That run is the reason the Kendricks shot a new Flywheel in Rio. Domestically, The Numbers lists The Forge at $6,659,508 in its opening weekend from 1,818 theaters, $3,663 a screen, and a domestic total of $29,123,632. The opening was 22.9 percent of that total, and the film added theaters in week two. At $3,663 a screen, 554 theaters would have grossed about $2.03 million. Flywheel grossed $188,749, about 9 percent of that pace. Six days in, the opening weekend is most of the money on the books. The Forge, from the same writers and the same label, was still early in a run that finished at more than four times its opening.
What the 2003 film was
The original was not a 554-screen release. Sherwood Pictures, the movie arm of Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia, made it for $20,000. Lifeway Research puts the theatrical gross at $37,000. The Hollywood Reporter, accounting for the hits that followed, described a single Carmike theater and 350,000 DVDs. The Numbers lists no domestic gross for the 2003 film, so the $37,000 figure is Lifeway’s, not a modern chart. The remake’s opening weekend is about five times that theatrical total, and it took a Sony booking to get there. The 2003 audience found the movie on a disc. This release asked for a Friday.
Stephen Kendrick said in the April announcement that the new film was “better shot, acted, and scored than the original,” and that he wanted to see how fall audiences would respond. The U.S. response so far is $341 a screen. Alex Kendrick played the salesman in 2003. The April cast line bills him with Bregieira, Faria, and the Brazilian company, and Ingresso’s October 13 story on the Brazilian trailer calls the part a special appearance. The salesman this campaign is built around is Mario Bregieira.
Brazil is still a date
Affirm’s April 22 release said the film would open in Brazil and Latin America in September, a month before the United States. Exibidor reported a Heaven Content date of September 24. The film’s Brazilian site now says November 12. Ingresso reported that Friday on October 13, when Heaven Content put out a local trailer. The Numbers lists a limited Brazilian release that day, under the title A virada: Ignição da alma. Mojo’s worldwide total equals the domestic figure. No foreign gross has posted. The market named in the announcement has not opened, and the English dub went first.
The Brazilian site is already pricing November 12 for groups: 20 tickets at half price, and a private session at 100. That offer sits on a page for a country whose Friday has not arrived. It does not change what 554 American theaters did.
The listed running times do not match. Mojo and The Numbers put the U.S. cut at 1 hour 50 minutes. Exibidor’s Brazilian file says 123 minutes. Neither page says what the extra minutes are. No production budget for the remake has been published, and a gross without that figure, and without the share of the ticket the theaters keep, does not say whether the film covered its cost. What the weekend does establish is the booking. Affirm put a dubbed remake of the Kendricks’ first movie into 554 U.S. theaters, in the territory that was supposed to open second, and those theaters averaged what Angel’s western averaged after losing 993 screens. The next domestic chart will show whether 554 rooms are still reserved. November 12 is the Friday the Brazil plan now names, and it has not happened.
