With a little divine help, Mel Gibson remained the top draw at the North American box office as the filmmaker's controversial movie, "The Passion of the Christ," topped ticket sales with an estimated haul of $51.4 million in its second weekend, its distributor said on Sunday.
After 12 days in release, the gritty recount of the last 12 hours of Christ's life has soared to $212 million (including $3 million in private group sales the prior two days), said Bob Berney, president of Newmarket Films.
It slipped 39 percent from the prior weekend, a remarkable hold for a blockbuster opening. Most films lose about half their business in the second weekend.
"I think this is an event or phenomenon, and people are checking it out across the board," Berney said in a teleconference.
He added it was "fairly obvious" that the movie would push past $300 million.
Some rival studios said the $51.4 million estimate could be a little conservative, and the number could be higher when final data are released on Monday. Such was the case last week, when weekend sales turned out to be $83.9 million, about $7.7 million above the estimate. The big variable is Sunday business and the extent to which people's movie-going decisions may be influenced by their church activities, industry insiders said.
"Sunday's a big day, so we're trying to make a fairly educated guess, but we always could be surprised," Berney said.
The film opened on Friday in Portugal and Poland, and is also playing in New Zealand, Australia and Greece. Sales data were not immediately available for those territories.
Newmarket is a unit of closely held Newmarket Capital Group.