After opening on Ash Wednesday, the film captured the No. 1 box-office position for the weekend with $76.2 million from Friday to today, according to the Associated Press. That was the seventh-best three-day opening ever.
The movie, which graphically chronicles Jesus’ last 12 hours, is the first movie released in 2004 to cross the $100 million mark. Gibson put up the movie’s estimated $25 million budget and will reap most of the returns.
Bob Berney, president of the film’s North American distributor, Newmarket Films, said in a Reuters story: “The grass-roots and the controversy obviously helped, but when you get this big a number, it’s a mainstream ‘wanna-see,’ and word-of-mouth is now in effect.”
