Saint Judy Greer Tops Sinner Hugh Grant At Friday Box Office

'The Best Christmas Pageant Ever' earned $5 million, while 'Heretic' earned $4.3 million, even if 'Venom: The Last Dance' is fated to top with a $16 million weekend.

In a pleasant surprise, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever was tops at the domestic box office on Friday. Lionsgate and Kingdom Story Company’s adaptation of Barbara Robinson’s generationally popular 1972 novel earned $5 million (counting sneak previews and Thursday showings), setting the stage for a likely over/under $11 million opening weekend. That’s, quite shockingly, Lionsgate’s second-best opening weekend of the year behind The Strangers: Chapter 1 ($12 million this past May). It’s also a halfway decent showing, especially this decade, for a significant faith-based film. While Lionsgate’s late-2010s offerings like The Shack and I Can Only Imagine once pulled in over/under $17 million debuts, thus far Jesus Revolution has been the only such title to comparatively overperform in the new normal. Otherwise, their faith-based titles, including the quite good Ordinary Angels, have opened below $8 million.  

As for this title’s comparative upswing, which (inflation notwithstanding) is on par with the $10-$11 million debuts of more secular Christmas titles like The Night Before and Last Christmas, the source material is just popular and well-known enough to give the Dallas Jenkins-directed picture a bit of juice alongside the still halfway decent faith-based demographics. Again, this is a $10 million-plus opening weekend for a sub-genre (faith-based melodramas from Lionsgate or Sony like Heaven is For Real or with known actors that were aspirational and Veggie Tales-ish in their dogma) that used to pull $60-$90 million domestic totals on the semi-regular. However, on a curve, this is a solid showing (and the first time a Judy Greer *star vehicle* has topped the box office, if only for a night) that almost qualifies as a miracle.  

Both of this weekend’s big new releases were ironically somewhat “faith-based” in nature. That includes A24’s Heretic, which stars Hugh Grant as a creepy loner who traps two teen LDS missionaries (Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East) in his home and subjects them to an extended lecture/reply guy rant about the fallacy of religion. The picture, from Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who wrote A Quiet Place and last year’s Stephen King adaptation The Boogeyman and wrote/directed Haunt and 65, is both cleverly structured (if a good 15 minutes too long in the first and third acts) and frankly grade-school simplistic in its discourse. Still, even if it works better as a “society forces women to ignore their fear-based instincts to their peril” thriller than as a faith versus atheism flick, it primarily works. 

Grant is an added value element, as he hasn’t been a butts-in-seats draw since the early 2000s. However, a $4.31 million on Friday for a likely $10.9 million domestic debut qualifies as “not half bad” for original horror in 2024. A24 reportedly paid around $15 million and sold overseas distribution, meaning Heretic is essentially already profitable. The core concern for the genre is still the extent to which - Longlegs excepted – horror has become a more franchise-skewing genre with known IP (Alien: Romulus, A Quiet Place: Day One, The Strangers: Chapter 1, etc.) has towered over original flicks like Heretic, Abigail and Imaginary. Yes, that includes Cineverse cashing in on Terrifier 3’s popularity by announcing... yet another Silent Night Deadly Night remake. In the spirit of the above faith-based flicks, God fucking dammit!!