2016: Obama’s America Was No.1 At Box Offices Friday

Dinesh D‘Souza’s documentary on President Obama, “2016: Obama’s America” began playing nationwide on Friday, playing in 1,090 theatres, and it opened as the #1 movie in domestic box offices, Deadline reports.

2016 is only playing in a third of the theaters that some big budget, box office hits are playing in, such as The Expendables 2, which is playing in 3,335 theaters. 2016 is a documentary where D’Souza travels around the world, retracing the steps of Obama as a youth, and it is surely showing promise with Americans. Rocky Mountain Pictures released the documentary.

The Expendables 2 will likely finish at the top of the box office at the end of the weekend, but 2016 will likely hold its own only falling a spot or two on the list. It is expected to make between $4-$5 million dollars by the end of the weekend.

Deadline had the exclusive on this report:

The Stallone picture from Millenium/Lionsgate is still expected to end the weekend #1 and should top the box office tonight. And, based on matinee trends, 2016 Obama’s America looks to gross $1.2M-$1.7M Friday for a $3.7M-$5.0M weekend.

But right now it has grossed $700,000 today compared to $300,000 for The Expendables 2. Its new cume after this weekend could make it the #1 conservative documentary (ahead of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed’s $7.7M). The success of the anti-Obama pic is based on big pre-sales leading into the Republican National Convention August 27-30, and exhibitors are reporting busloads of filmgoers arriving at theaters around the country in pre-organized trips. It also employed much of the same marketing techniques used to garner attention and support for faith-based films, understandable since the audience is overlapping. Its campaign included advertising nationally over the past two weeks on talk radio and cable news channels including Fox News Channel, A&E, History and MSNBC.

Both online ticket-sellers Fandango and MovieTickets.com showed advance buying for 2016 Obama’s America were accounting for 35% to 28% respectively before this weekend. The pic is based on conservative author and commentator Dinesh D’Souza’s New York Times bestselling 2010 book The Roots Of Obama’s Rage and co-directed by D’Souza and John Sullivan and produced by Academy Award winner Gerald R. Molen (co-producer of Schindler’s List). It opened on July 13th in a preview on a single screen in Texas grossing almost $32,000 during its opening weekend, then expanded into 61 theaters including New York and Los Angeles. In August, the film widened to 169 theaters nationwide and expanded again this weekend. “Yes, I also didn’t believe it when I first saw the film taking off in pre-sales on Tuesday,” an exhibition insider tells me. “Because there’s not a lot of new product that’s taking off.”

If you haven’t seen the 2016 trailer, watch it here:

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