Creation: The true story of Charles Darwin
Creation, the movie, has completed its third weekend in the US. Earlier US results are discussed here: 1st Weekend Box Office Results and 2nd Weekend Box Office Results
The estimated results can be seen at this website box office results, February 5-7. The films are listed by gross receipts, so you’ll have to scroll down to number 45 (that will be adjusted when final figures are in). Here are the preliminary numbers:
Showing at 9 theaters (down from 12 last weekend)
Total gross receipts: $18,500 ($39,994 last weekend, which had 3 more theaters)
Receipts per theater: $2,056 ($3,333 last weekend)
The average of receipts per theater is down from last weekend, but if you look at the entire list of 64 films, only ten of them did better. Creation is still doing well for the theaters that are showing it.
Let’s compare this to Ben Stein’s creationist documentary, Expelled, for that film’s third weekend. The results are online here. Scroll down to the 15th film. It was showing at 656 theaters, way down from 1,041 theaters on its 2nd weekend. The average per theater was $1,034, about the same as the earlier weekend.
So for its third weekend in the US, Creation is grossing almost twice as much per theater as Expelled did. Creation doesn’t look like it will make any money for its producers, but it doubtful that Ben Stein’s film did either. At least Creation wasn’t wildly promoted and distributed at over 1,000 theaters. That had to be a financial disaster for the backers of Expelled. However, given the per-theater results, maybe Creation should have been promoted more aggressively.
Hey, don’t be glum. The theory of evolution won’t stand or fall on the performance of this movie. A film about Isaac Newton wouldn’t be a box office hit either, but his work has stood up rather well.
Copyright © 2010. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
Looks like it’s done.
The Gadfly says: “Looks like it’s done.”
Maybe. There’s obviously no money being spent on promotion. The theaters showing it are probably doing okay, but there’s not much incentive for others to pick it up if there’s no advertising.
How about a few pickets? (“Ban this pro-creationist nonsense!” or “This film exaggerates Darwin’s Nazi roots!”)
Should get a few of the faithful to have a look at it.
Curmudgeon: “Creation doesn’t look like it will make any money for its producers, but it doubtful that Ben Stein’s film did either.”
But I would guess that “Creation” was produced specifically to make money, whereas “Expelled” was produced to “save the world” from the evil of “Darwinism/atheism/natutalism/humanism/Nazism.”
Curmudgeon: “The theory of evolution won’t stand or fall on the performance of this movie.”
Or on the performance of “Expelled.” But the fact that “Expelled” had to resort to paranoid conspiracy “theories” and Godwin’s Law to make its case is a powerful argument for evolution.
A bit off-topic but I liked today’s PZ Myers blog entry ( http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/02/it_isnt_an_exclusionary_filter.php ) where he says, “You’re not being excluded if you have nothing to offer.”