Church-produced film Courageous finished fourth overall and first among new releases at the box office in its opening weekend, earning more than $9 million dollars and beating out three other high-profile new releases, Dream House, What’s Your Number, and 50/50. Courageous, the story of four police officers who promise one another to become godly men after one of them endures a family tragedy, was produced by Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Ga., the producers of the hit films Fireproof and Facing the Giants. Weekend numbers for Courageous beat Fireproof’s opening numbers by over $2 million.
Ray Subers of BoxOfficeMojo.com commented on the film, “Made outside of Hollywood without any major stars, Courageous managed to fly under most radars (including my own) until very recently. It’s unfair to ignore the vast majority of church-going Americans for whom typical Hollywood fare isn’t of great interest, though, and Sherwood Pictures has impressively found a way to mobilize this subset of the population. It will be interesting to see if Courageous can hold as well as Fireproof did when it went on to earn $33.46 million, or nearly five times its opening weekend, in 2008.”
