Dumbo just barely squeaked out Us to take over the number one spot in North America box office numbers with an abysmally low $45 million.
Disney’s star-studded affair from director Tim Burton came in way under expectations with critics and audiences being underwhelmed by the big budget live-action remake.
But one anti-Abortion movie Unplanned shocked Hollywood with these eye-popping numbers.
When Mel Gibson’s friends told him that putting his own money into producing The Passion of the Christ was a terrible move, he proved them wrong by grossing $611 million worldwide.
When people said that Greg Kinnear shouldn’t take the patriarchal role in ‘Heaven is for Real’ because it would bomb and it might affect his career, they were proven wrong when they saw it went on to gross $101 million on only a $12 million budget.
The fact is most people in Hollywood aren’t Christian and they’d rather focus on passion projects or big budget action movies because they think that’s where all the money is.
While Dumbo isn’t a total flop yet, Unplanned also hit theaters this past weekend and made way more than anybody projected.
The pro-life movie rounded out the top five spots with an impressive $6.1 million from only 1,059 theaters. It’s important to note that most big budget movies like Dumbo, average more than 4,000 theaters on opening weekend so Unplanned is a smash hit if you put it into that context.
The synopsis of the film is a true story about an ex-Planned Parenthood health center director, Abby Johnson, who became a national pro-life leader and made it her life’s mission to eliminate taxpayer funding for the shameless organization.
Co-directors Cary Solomon and Chuck Konzelman said Sunday in a statement. “We are thrilled, gratified and humbled, Unplanned. We are so pleased that the American people have responded with such an enormous outpouring of support at the box office. It humbles us and we look forward to seeing what happens in the weeks ahead.”
Meanwhile on Twitter, the social media platform attempted to sabotage the movie when they suspended the account briefly right before the movie opened nationwide.
Several users screenshot several notices of suspension because given the anti-abortion message, it was likely flagged for “inappropriate content.”
Twitter argues that it wasn’t suspended on purpose and that it had somehow “violated Twitter’s rules.”
According to the Hollywood Reporter, “When one account violates those rules, the system then cracks down on linked accounts to mitigate the risk that the original banned account would simply move accounts. After reviewing this case a second time, Twitter decided the Unplanned account should not be affected by the other’s suspension and restored it.”
Co-director and writer Konzelman responded to the suspension with, “It’s a sad state of affairs when the right to free speech gets shut down with the flick of a switch. The Twitter account for our film, Unplanned, was suspended this morning — without explanation. Whether this was an executive decision by Twitter, or a reaction by Twitter to complaints from those opposed to the pro-life viewpoint, either reason is unacceptable. Fortunately, the uproar in our defense was loud and fast in coming: Our account has since been reinstated. Thanks to all who have rallied to our defense.”
And given the amount of money that it made for a low-budget faith based movie, it couldn’t be more obvious that there is a huge pro-life market and they will not be silenced.
The over-performance of Unplanned should speak volumes to producers in Hollywood but it likely won’t.