"War Room," a Christian drama film, is poised to pull a surprising upset of reigning box office champ "Straight Outta Compton."
As of Friday's earnings record, the N.W.A. biopic grossed $3.8 million which is right on track for a $12 million weekend ticket sales. It is estimated that before the new week starts, "Compton" would be taking home $133 million in gross earnings.
On the other hand, Variety reports that "War Room" has managed to sneak in on the box office charts with a $3.9 million marker on Friday after being released in 1,135 movie houses. It is set to make around $10 million over the weekend.
The faith inspiring film is released under Sony's TriStar division and the central theme of the movie is solving marriage issues with the power of prayer.
A report in deadline.com dissects how "War Room" managed to creep up on ticket sales of the hit biopic. The film is directed by Alex Kendrick who earns his second A+ CinemaScores rating after getting one for "Courageous" in 2011. He is the only film maker to hold this distinction. The last movie to get this grade was "American Sniper." Most pundits in the film industry did not see the surge in earnings coming except for Fandango which caught advance ticket sales records showing the Christian drama running second to "Compton."
The deadline.com report further explains that when it comes to faith-based movies, director Kendrick has the nod of many critics as being among the best in the genre. Two of his movies, "Fireproof" and "Courageous" were made with small budgets; $500,000 and $2 million respectively. Despite this fact, the two films earned a combined $35 million in domestic ticket sales. It was noted that the last faith-related movie to gross big was "Heaven Is For Real" released in 2014 which earned $22.5 million.
Watch the trailers below.
