‘War Room’ Movie Buzz, Box Office: $11.9 Million Opening Weekend For $3 Million Christian Movie
The movie titled War Room was certainly being hailed as the “little movie that could” on Friday, with War Room earning $11.9 million last weekend, reports Fox. That’s quite a feat for the War Room movie, especially since the Christian film that was filmed in North Carolina only cost $3 million to make. Earning more than $11.9 million in only 1,135 theaters, War Room earned triple the money that movies like Straight Outta Compton earned comparatively, based on the average number of screens earning average.
The War Room filmmakers understood the strategy of a grass-roots promotion that included showing their Christian film to leaders in the Christian arena – those same leaders of faith who would recommend the movie to their church members as a safe bet.
Word-of-mouth reviews from plenty of church folk and Christian friends beyond the church walls are propelling War Room to enjoy crowded movie theater screenings. Released on August 28, War Room isn’t actually about a physical war per se – although that would be a good assumption for plenty of men to hold when tromping off to the movies with their wives and girlfriends to see War Room. Instead, War Room tells the tale of a seemingly happy husband and wife who have everything together on the surface, but underneath, not so much.
The “war room” in the title is actually a prayer room that Miss Clara – the wise old soul in the movie – points the main characters towards in order to battle the spiritual warfare threatening to tear the troubled marriage apart.
As reported by CBS, the couple portrayed in the forefront of War Room are a man and woman with wealthy means, but that doesn’t always make for a smooth marriage. With a primarily African-American cast, War Room is being called the Fireproof for black people. Fireproof was a movie that took the box office by storm in 2008, making it one of the highest-grossing indie movies that year.
Whereas Fireproof had at its heart threats of adultery coming against a marriage, so does War Room. Fireproof starred Kirk Cameron as a man who was about to lose his wife and received the odd advice to do something kind for his wife for 30 days in an attempt to change her heart and give the marriage another try. The resultant Love Dare book featured in the film became a bestseller.
Will the success of War Room mean that plenty of people start setting up war rooms in their houses like panic rooms – or converting closet space into their personal war rooms in which to pray?
[Image via YouTube]
