Bad Movie Done In By Vast Left-Wing Theater Conspiracy

This past weekend two movies opened that, I thought, might provide an early indicator of the public split between liberal and conservative.  In particular, I thought it would shed a light on the idea, so often asserted on right-wing talk radio, that "conservatives" are the majority in this country.

Two movies - David Zucker's "An American Carol" and Bill Maher's "Religulous" undertake to preach to their respective choirs about the inherent insanity of the other choir.  In short, "An American Carol" is an effort to mock left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore and his (real or imagined) disdain for America, while "Religulous" is an attempt to mock organized religion and its adherents.

I'm not particularly a fan of either movie (based on style, not substance - I haven't seen either).  But I don't like movies that have as an agenda the mockery of people for their beliefs.  Just because I might disagree with someone's beliefs doesn't give me the right to mock them.  Challenge and question them, yes.  But outright mockery?  I just think that's in poor taste.  But to each his own.

That said, there are a lot of people who will find these movies funny and entertaining, for no other reason than each respective movie supports and reflects the world views of those who like each movie.  And with that in mind, I figure that you can identify the general compass of the nation by which movie does better at the box office.

Fortunately, both movies opened the same weekend, so neither movie could attribute a poor performance to an event that took place on its opening weekend that did not take place on the opening weekend of the other movie. 

Reviews were not mixed.  "Religulous" gained a 68% Fresh Rating at RottenTomatoes.  Erstwhile, "An American Carol" received only a 13% Fresh Rating.  Translated to normal English - reviewers liked "Religulous" and did not like "An American Carol."  In fact, in my observations, I don't think I have seen more than a couple movies ever rate worse than "An American Carol" on RottenTomatoes.

When the opening week box-office numbers came out, "An American Carol" opened at number 9, while "Religulous" opened at number 10.  Gross numbers reflected "An American Carol" earned $4,354,000, while "Religulous" earned $4,202,216.  (You can see the week's charts here in Variety.  Be sure to look at the week ending Oct. 9, 2008).

On its face, it appeared that "An American Carol" won out, albeit by a slim margin.  But that's not the whole picture.  "An American Carol" opened on 1,639 screens, averaging $2,656 per screen.  "Religulous" opened on only 502 screens, but averaged $8,371 per screen.  Thus, on a per screen basis, "Religulous" won the week by an overwhelming margin.  What that translates into is "Religulous" played to packed houses, while "An American Carol" played to roughly 25% filled seats.

Apparently, the abysmal per-screen showing of "An American Carol" has inspired tales of a vast theater conspiracy to skew the ticket sales.  Stories abound that theaters took money for "An American Carol" and then printed out tickets for something else.

On NewsBusters, commentator Warner Todd Huston suggests that it "wouldn't surprise [him] if it turned out that certain people were trying to doom this film," in regard to the ticket sales issue.  Huston's post also contains a link to the movie's website where people can report fraudulent ticket sales.  As of this posting, no such link exists.  Huston himself notes the absence of the link in a subsequent posting (wherein he also denies alleging the existence of a conspiracy - I'll let you interpret his above quote however you choose).

Notably, few on the right want to acknowledge that, just maybe, "An American Carol" isn't very good, got poor reviews, and nobody went to see it.