Scene in Courageous

In its opening weekend the low budget feature film, Courageous garnered ticket sales totaling over nine times what it cost to produce. It finished fourth in total sales for the weekend, but it achieved that in only 1,161 theaters, while all other films in the top 10 were shown on at least 2,300 screens.

Courageous also enjoyed the highest sales per theater over the weekend.

Courageous was produced by Sherwood Pictures, which is associated with Sherwood Church, a Baptist congregation in Albany, Georgia. The same team was responsible for the hit motion pictures, Fireproof and Facing the Giants.

Of course, making money at the box office and making a good film are not necessarily the same thing. But Courageous seems to have reached beyond its core conservative evangelical Christian market, with good opening sales in towns like Fresno, California, and Concord, New Hampshire.

Even the Boston Globe, while panning some of the dialogue as heavy-handed, ended its review with some grudging praise: ”[The lead actor delivers] a couple of wrenchingly tender scenes. He also has a fun mistaken-identity exchange with Amaya that’s like a ‘Who’s on First?’ routine. An opening auto-theft sequence involving Bevel is skillful and tense, and nicely sets up the story’s protector themes.”

After many, many failed attempts to make good quality motion pictures with Christian themes, it seems we may finally be learning how it’s done. Praise God.