It's going to gross over 2 billion worldwide. The appeal internationally is even greater than domestically. FUN FACT: The man that was able to get the Passion opened up in France (It had been banned earlier) is a Muslim!! He saw how much money it was making and didn't want to be left out!

More than half the people I talk to (all Christians) have not even seen this yet, due to the fact that they can't get tickets! It was sold out all weekend at 6 theaters here.

Remember, to many (myself included), this is not just a movie . . . it's a spiritual experience. That, in itself, will put this movie over the top at 2 billion.

I could be wrong here, but I doubt the appeal is greater outside the U.S.
I am originally from England and still have a large number of friends and family there. None of them are going to see it. Over here, most of the people I know have seen it. Religion is a much smaller part of life in Europe than over here. Just my 2 cents.

What about france, catholic countries in eastern europe, italy and the middle east? Korea has a huge christian population and will probably turn out in droves to see this. I imagine a lot of muslims will want to see this too.

And don't forget about Central & South America!

Chris

Forgot that. I saw the movie yesterday and there were a lot of hispanics in the theater. I think that this is going to be a must see movie in any catholic dominated country.

As far as my opinions, other than the questionable chronological events and Pontius being a wimp I don't see any anti-semitism. And I used to go to the synogogue years ago. I think the screenplay went to great length to paint Jesus as being Jewish himself.

I think that the problem that many news outlets miss is what happened after Saul became Paul. He preached to the gentiles and this is what caused Christianity to separate from it's Jewish and middle eastern roots. How many Christians today think of Jesus as Jewish especially with all the European pictures of him?

Hmm...looks like Passion was underestimated again...Mojo just raised the weekend estimate $1.8 mil to $53.1 since it seems the Sunday total was too low. Let's see what the actuals say.

I agree with you and your assessment of Titanic - that just seems to far out there.

But the only reason The Passion is not on pace with Return of the King is because Return of the King's second week was dominated by the Christmas Holiday season - one of the biggest movie-going times of the year - when everybody's out of work and school.

The Passion is open during regular, non-Holiday winter - which is traditionally the film "dumping ground" season. That it's competing on this level is truly incredible, and I suspect it will end up beating Return of the King in the long run.

I think the most amazing aspect is that the film is R-rated and is still pulling in these numbers. It took twenty years for the highest grossing R-rated movie record to be broken (and that's not adjusted for inflation either) and that was with an obscenely hyped and anticipated movie. And MR's R-rating was pretty tame especially compared to Passion. Nowadays it seems that PG/PG13 movies can routinely hit the $250-300 mil mark, but it's still untrodden territory for R-raters.

i know that it has a flat chance of beating Titanic's record but.... there is always hope.......



Titanic was just a very overrated movie

You know...I just don't think so. I've been wrong on this movie before, so who knows, but I don't think even with these numbers it's tracking to beat the 600 mil of Titanic. I haven't seen international numbers, but I haven't heard that they're somehow stronger than in this country, in fact I heard Australia was pretty soft, so this tells me no, it won't beat Titanic. It is huge though...

Yep, I don't think even God himself has the power to topple the Titanic juggernaut. This movie will be huge but it's not gonna touch that freak in either market.

The thing is, we just really don't know what it will do. Who knew after a week and a half that Titanic would do what it did? It's fun to speculate though.

Passion will do well in countries where Christianity is strong and weak where it isn't - simple as that. I don't see the overall international appeal that Titanic had. Take Japan for instance, Titanic did gangbusters but I doubt Passion will even be released there due to lack of interest. It's different here. It appeals to non-Christians as well as Christians here because it is an American movie made by Mel Gibson and has gotten a tremendous amount of press. My prediction is that it will not get close to Titanic's gross overseas.

Domestic gross is a different animal and a very interesting story. I have no idea whether it will break Titanic's record. If it does, I think it will have to do the bulk of it by Easter. I predict after Easter, this film drops like a rock. But that's over a month away and judging by how it is doing, it may be possible. I don't think it is enough time though. Titanic ran well for at least a couple of months. I think it will drop very gradually and rise dramatically Easter weekend. It could even approach opening week numbers that weekend. Then, it's done.

I've been severely underestimating this movie so far so I'm probably doing it again. I would personally like to see it best Titanic but I'm just floored that we're even talking about it. That is a tribute to whatMel Gibson has achieved.

Nope sorry, it's a tribute to what Jesus Christ has achieved!

Chris

nope sorry,its what Mel Gibson has achieved,Jesus had nothing to do (other than being the topic of the movie,and Mel Gibson believing in him) with the makeing of this movie, without Mel Gibson this movie is never made.It would be like saying the captain of the titanic was why titanic was such a great sucsess or Hitler(without hitler spielberg might not have a topic,and i hardly think schindlers list is hitlers achievment) is why Schindlers list is a great movie that had great sucsess

This is going to make 350-380 mill domestic, and about half that worldwide. (Yeah in theory Latin America should be huge, but if you look at how much Latin America normally does, success there is nowhere near enough to compensate for the fact that Japan will be totally uninterested and Europe only slightly so.)

"Who knew after a week and a half that Titanic would do what it did?"

Well, the fact that Titanic's box office went UP in its second week instead of down was a pretty big hint. Neither the Passion nor ROTK can make that claim.

Titanic's box office may have gone up the second week, but that's because it opened right before christmas and its second week was right over christmas so more people were off work and more kids were out of school.

titanic was/is/always will be crap. I havent seen the PotC yet, but it CANT be worse than Titanic.

AFA it making money oversees... there are a lot of catholics in south europe and junk, that oughta help. I agree that it prolly wont do much in asia etc though.

j

And what other movies with a similar opening date have done that? Any?

Tomorrow Never Dies opened the same day as Titanic. The former lost 18.5% in its second weekend, the latter was up 23.8%.

I could have sworn i saw Titanic in November when it first came out

Sorry, opened December 19, 1997.

Well, either way, this movie is opening a lot of eyes . . . . and a lot of wallets.

I don't know of any other movies that have done that. All I was saying was that Titanic had more of an opportunity for it because of the time of year that it was released, that's all. Had The Passion of the Christ been released in December, it would have made even more money than it has, possibly breaking a few more records just for the fact that people are off work and students aren't in school. If Titanic had opened in February, I seriously doubt that it would have been able to pull off what it did in its second weekend.

Plenty of limited release movies have done it, but Titanic's theater count only increased by around 1% the second week.

Not only did Titanic's take go up the second weekend, but 4 of the first 10 weekends went up over the previous week. Ranging from 21-36 million a weekend for 10 stait weeks, with an average ~$30 million per weekend in that time. It was #1 at the boxoffice for over 4 months.

I disagree. I think The Passion is doing better now than it would in December, because there isn't a lot of competition. This is the traditional "dumping ground" for crap films, so to release it now ensured a larger audience.

If The Passion had been released at the same time that Return of the King was in the theaters, most theater managers would have through they had died and gone to theater heaven.