It’s official: Hollywood has fallen for God, and God, or at least mammon, appears to reciprocate the affection.



War Room, a low-budget paean to the power of prayer, has become the latest faith-based film to triumph at the United States box office.

Made for $3.5m with largely unknown actors, the Christian family drama underwhelmed critics yet crushed rival films which relied in vain on the old-fashioned formula of stars, explosions and sex.

War Room shook up the box office by grossing $11.4m on its opening weekend, far ahead of the other new releases No Escape, an action flick with Owen Wilson and Pierce Brosnan, and We Are Your Friends, an-R rated dance music drama starring Zac Efron.

In what has now become a ritual, the trade press reached for spiritual metaphors and puns to explain the numbers. “The box office underwent a religious conversion,” said Variety. “War Room raises holy hell at box office,” declared the Wrap. “Moviegoers gave it up to God today,” said Deadline.com.

It was pipped for the top spot by Straight Outta Compton, which earned $13.3m in its third weekend, but War Room’s performance was all the more impressive because it played in only 1,135 locations versus 3,142 locations for the rap biopic.

“It’s a very good result because it didn’t cost a lot to make or promote,” said Phil Contrino, vice-president and senior analyst at BoxOffice.com. “It was propelled by word-of-mouth and targeted advertising. I think it’ll hold up quite well in the weeks ahead.”

The film tells the story of a wise, elderly woman, played by Karen Abercrombie, who helps a middle-aged, affluent African American couple, played by Priscilla Shirer and TC Stallings, to patch up their fraying marriage by turning a closet into a “prayer war room”.

Most critics loathed it, according to the aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, but audiences rated it A+, according to CinemaScore, an adoration level last recorded in January for Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper.

It cements the brothers Alex and Stephen Kendrick as among the most commercially successful independent producers of faith-based films. It is their fifth collaboration with Sony Pictures Entertainment, which released War Room under its Affirm division, for religious films. Previous collaborations included Courageous, Fireproof and Facing the Giants.

“They are intimately connected to faith leaders across the country and work hard to integrate themes within their movies that resound with these leaders and provide resources that allow the use of the movie as both entertainment and a useful tool to change lives and hearts,” Rich Peluso, senior vice-president of Affirm Films, said in a statement.

He also praised a grassroots marketing team for reaching a faith-based audience which was “anything but monolithic”.

Alex Kendrick, who wrote, directed and starred in War Room, told the Hollywood Reporter he realised during the writing that the film would be more powerful and passionate if told from an African American perspective. “The African-American church is more visceral, they are more expressive and there is a powerful passion to their prayers.”

He shrugged off the critics’ lambasting (“preachy”, “overwrought”, “a mess”, “infantile”, “shot like a term-life insurance infomercial”). “They’re not coming at it from our worldview. We get that. All of us have free will.”

Other recent Christian-themed films such as Noah, Heaven is for Real, Do You Believe, Son of God and God is Not Dead have also fared well at the box office.

Even so, some observers seem perpetually taken aback by their success, said Contrino, the box office analyst. “It’s kind of baffling when people are baffled by religious movies opening well. And it’s funny to hear religious movies called a niche. It’s much bigger than that. If you give [audiences] content that reinforces their belief system and connects with them in a powerful way you get good box office grosses.”

The phenomenon is as old as Ben-Hur (1959) and The Ten Commandments (1956) but the modern trend for Bible-inspired films started with Mel Gibson’s 2004 smash The Passion of the Christ, said Contrino. “I don’t think Hollywood is surprised by this because all the major studios are making efforts to connect with this audience.”

Hugh Jackman is due to play the apostle Paul in a new film produced by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.