'Passion' has big box office debut
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A crowd files into a theater in Texas to watch "The Passion of the Christ."
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LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Blessed by intense media attention and a heavy Christian turnout, Mel Gibson's controversial film "The Passion of the Christ" grossed well over $20 million on its first day in theaters, its distributor said Thursday.
Released in 3,006 theaters in North America on Ash Wednesday, the dramatization of the last 12 hours of Jesus' life generated first-day business of nearly $26.6 million, according to Bob Berney, president of privately owned Newmarket Films.
But box office tracking service Exhibitor Relations Co., said Newmarket's figure included $3 million in group sales for Monday and Tuesday preview screenings.
By that reckoning, the $23.6 million posted for the film's official first day ranks as the fifth-biggest Wednesday opening of all time, Exhibitor Relations said.
That record, $34.4 million, is currently held by "The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King," followed by "Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace" ($28.5 million), "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" ($26.2 million) and "The Matrix Revolutions ($24.3 million).
In any case, "The Passion" has generated nearly as much in North American ticket sales as the $30 million Gibson personally invested in it, an impressive achievement for a film presented in Hebrew, Latin and Aramaic, with English subtitles.
"I think it's a phenomenon," Berney told Reuters, saying the film owed its commercial success to a mix of Gibson's popularity, the broad appeal of its religious theme and weeks of media coverage riveted on controversy surrounding the film.
Some Jewish leaders have criticized "The Passion" as a film that could foment anti-Semitism by depicting Jews as collectively responsible for Jesus' crucifixion. Many movie reviews, too, have criticized the unrelentingly graphic level of violence in the film.
Appearing as a guest for Thursday's telecast of NBC's "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," Gibson said he was surprised by the intensity of the "nasty editorials and name-calling."
"I mean right out of the box, without anyone even seeing it, prejudgment and condemnation," he said. "And then demands were made to try to change it. I don't know any director or any artist who would bow to this kind of pressure. It's just wrong. It's not American."
He repeated his assertion that the message of the film is one of "tolerance" and scoffed at criticism that he got carried away with the violence, saying, "I don't believe it's gratuitous at all."
Gibson directed, co-wrote and produced the film, which took 13 years to bring to the screen and stars Jim Caviezel as Jesus. Gibson said he first noticed Caviezel, whom he described as having an "otherworldly quality," in the 1998 war film "The Thin Red Line."
"The Passion" obviously benefited from advance screenings arranged for church groups by producers, and endorsements from some members of the clergy who saw it.
"The most important factor in the success of this film is it's appealing to a tremendously broad base of Christians across this country," Exhibitor Relations president Paul Dergarabedian said. "There's a movie here that speaks to a major event in Christianity, and you've got this huge response to it. There is a built-in audience for this movie, and they certainly have come out in droves."
Said Newmarket's Berney: "It shows there is a vast, underserved audience for a film like this, a religious film. I think people feel like Hollywood has not given them a film like this, and now they've stepped up and said, 'We're here."
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Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
