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“Why should the devil have all the good music?” sang the terrific Christian rock star Larry Norman, who in a 1978 concert converted the teenaged future vice president Mike Pence (now 64). In 2023, millions of film fans of faith felt the devil shouldn’t get all the good movies, either.
The Chosen, the TV hit about Jesus seen by 108 million people, spawned December’s spinoff movie Christmas With the Chosen: Holy Night. And faith audiences made the controversial anti-sex-trafficking hit Sound of Freedom (on Amazon’s Prime Video Dec. 26) the ninth top-grossing 2023 movie in America, at $248 million, ahead of Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour and the latest Indiana Jones movie.
Here are the five most popular faith-based films of 2023, according to author and Christianity Today contributor Peter T. Chattaway, 53. They all cracked the $10 million mark in ticket sales, according to Box Office Mojo:
Jesus Revolution ($54.2 million)
This film stars Frasier’s Kelsey Grammer, 68, as Greg Laurie, 71, pastor of California’s huge Harvest Christian Fellowship. Fighting back tears, Grammer said on Live With Kelly and Ryan, “He’s a man looking for his own faith. He’s starting to think he’s going to get fired from his job as a pastor. This hippie comes into his life, and he finds a new purpose and started a movement that is still going.” Chattaway says this film could be particularly appealing to AARP readers: “It’s a depiction of the ‘Jesus People’ movement of the late ’60s and early ’70s, so it was rather appealing to Christians of a certain generation.”
The Blind ($17.3 million)
It’s a biopic that shows how Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson (77) grew from a dead-broke Louisiana child who hunted for food to a chronic alcoholic, until the wife he miserably mistreated got him to see the light. Fans were thrilled to watch how Robertson (played by Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’s Aron von Adrian) overcame what he called a “sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll lifestyle” for a life of piety and sobriety (plus reality-TV fame). “Our little movie helped thousands run up on Jesus, and that’s what I’m most thankful for this year,” Robertson said on Instagram. “That and getting to cook duck and dressing for my family.” Says Chattaway, “It takes place in the ’60s, with a framing narrative in the early ’80s, so it’s got the generational appeal too."
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