"Expelled" at the box office.

By Alison Willmore on 04/21/2008

Did all the controversy-courting work for Ben Stein's critically unloved anti-Darwinist documentary "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed"? The film, which opened last weekend against Morgan Spurlock's equally pop if not so rampantly right-wing "Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?", racked up over $3 million at the box office.Two reads, the first from Nikki Finke at Deadline Hollywood, who doesn't call this a success:

[T]he per screen average for Friday was a low $1,145 and for Saturday $940 (and $2,830 for the entire weekend), showing there wasn't much pent-up demand for the film despite an aggressive publicity campaign on right-wing media. So much for the conservative argument that people would flock to films not representing the "agenda of liberal Hollywood". (Just for comparison purposes: left-wing Michael Moore's most recent Sicko did $4.4 mil its opening weekend from only 441 theaters, and his Fahrenheit 9/11 did $23.9M its opening weekend from 868 venues.)

AJ Schnack at All These Wonderful Things disagrees, writing that the film is "by no means a blockbuster by narrative standards, but highly successful for such a widely released doc, particularly in the current climate."

The success of EXPELLED marks the first time that a conservative-targeted nonfiction film has made a mark at the box office. For years there have been questions as to why there wasn't a conservative strand of documentary and why film festivals seem to exclusively screen docs with a liberal, activist tilt. Reasons given often revolved around dual arguments of quantity and quality. While EXPELLED may not satisfy the quality question, its success suggests that there is a market for other conservative docs, particularly if a filmmaker was able to score a high profile figure like Stein and follow a similar marketing path. Is the Glenn Beck anti-Gore film far behind?

"Where in the World," meanwhile, made less than half of "Expelled"'s on-screen average, pulling in $143,000 total. Back in January, Reuters reported that the Weinstein Co. paid $2 million for the film at Berlin, though more lip-frothy rumors put the figure as high as $25 million. Not everyone can be Michael Moore, the lesson seems to be. Speaking of, Moore gave his endorsement to Obama today, adding that "the actions and words of Hillary Clinton have gone from being merely disappointing to downright disgusting."

[Photo: "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," Rocky Mountain Pictures, 2008]

+ Jet And Jackie Nudge Out Judd For No. 1; Ben Stein Shows He's No Michael Moore (Deadline Hollywood Daily)
+ EXPELLED Trounces OSAMA, Nearly Enters Top 25 Docs All Time on First Weekend (All These Wonderful Things)
+ My Vote's for Obama (if I could vote) ...by Michael Moore (MichaelMoore.com)