This season's big faith-related studio movie, Evan Almighty depicts a modernised version of the Old Testament story of Noah in which the newly elected senator Evan Baxter, played by Steve Carrell, must build an ark to save his family from a worldwide flood. In the revamped Universal Studio concoction, Baxter, who was a newscaster in Bruce Almighty, is caught by surprise when "God" (Morgan Freeman) tells him to build the boat of biblical proportions.
Evan Almighty opened in the US last month with a disappointing debut weekend, only pulling in $32.1m in US and Canada ticket sales.
The movie, which is a sequel to Bruce Almighty starring Jim Carey, still came in first in the box office, but its return in sales is so far only a small chunk of the more than $250m estimated to create the flick.
"The key to success of a movie like Evan is to attract the faith-based audience while not alienating the secular audience," said analyst Paul Dergarabedian of research firm Media by Numbers, according to the Los Angeles Times. "Now they have to count on the movie having legs by having a strong word of mouth with the faith-based audience."
The film has received mixed reviews by Christians. Most of them are happy with the family-friendly tone of the film, being free of profanity, sex, and other inappropriate content.
But many large ministry heads have been unhappy with its biblical inaccuracy, however. Some have criticised the production for overly humanising God as well as misinterpreting the meaning of the flood described in Genesis.
