Granted, Mondays are slow days for movie theaters, but Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed grossed only $238,804 at 1,052 theaters, a third of what it grossed on Sunday.
[Updated 4/23/08: Tuesday's sales were $227,232 for a total to date of $3,436,884, according to Box Office Mojo.]
After five days in the theaters, the anti-evolution movie has grossed $3.4 million, far from the amount its producers need to break even. Nevertheless, it’s still ranked eighth in gross receipts for all April 18 releases and eighth in receipts for “political documentaries.’
In other words, for the kind of movie it is, Expelled is doing about as well as most observers would expect.
Whether it will have “legs” past its first week remains in doubt. Its release followed weeks of carefully orchestrated “private screenings” to sympathetic audiences, a national TV ad campaign, and attention from critics of the movie and its premise — that “Darwinists” persecute anyone who suggests evolution is invalid and that an Intelligent Designer (or God) created life on Earth.
The movie’s marketers have encouraged churches, youth groups and Christian schools to organize field trips to see Expelled in the theaters, offering them prizes for the most tickets purchased. Those efforts will probably not be enough to shore up sales, though.
