“Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” finished in the Top 10 among all movies in weekend box office estimates and could be on its way to finishing in the Top 10 all-time for documentaries.
The Ben Stein film about the debate between supporters of Darwinian evolution and Intelligent Design grossed $3.1 million, placing it ninth for the weekend. But its per-theater average of $2,997 – it opened in just over 1,000 theaters, which is a third of what some movies opened in – put it at fifth.
The Los Angeles Times’ Josh Friedman wrote that the opening was “robust for a documentary,” while Entertainment Weekly’s Joshua Rich said its gross was “very respectable” for its genre.
The 90-minute movie (PG, thematic elements, very brief language) explores the ongoing academic, legal and cultural battle between supporters of Darwinian evolution and Intelligent Design, which is the belief that certain aspects of the world are so complex that they are best explained as having been created by an intelligent being, instead of by a random process. Stein interviews supporters of Intelligent Design who say they have been “expelled” – fired, shunned or ridiculed (or all three) – from institutions for their beliefs.
It has the backing of Focus on the Family’s James Dobson and the Ethics and Religious Commission’s Richard Land, who said the film should be “required viewing” for anyone who wants to know “what is at stake in the debate over worldviews in this society.”
Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11,” which opened in 868 theaters and grossed $23.9 million its first weekend, ranks first all-time among documentaries in lifetime gross with $119.1 million, followed by “March of the Penguins” ($77.4 million), “Sicko” ($24.5 million), “An Inconvenient Truth” ($24.1 million) and “Bowling for Columbine” ($21.5 million). Number 10 on the list is “Hoop Dreams” at $7.8 million.
“Expelled – fared better than pre-release tracking had signaled,” Friedman of The Times wrote. “Its opening was robust for a documentary, though it was far from the Michael Moore-type blockbuster the producers had been hoping for.”