'The King of Kings' proves there's 'clearly an audience' for faith-based movies: expert

"The Kings of Kings," a faith-based film that retells the story of Jesus, has set a record for the biggest biblical animated movie opening ever — beating out 1998's "The Prince of Egypt" — even before it officially opened this weekend. 

By Thursday, the film had taken in more than $14.6 million in domestic pre-sales, showing that there’s "clearly an audience and a market for faith-based entertainment," Fox News contributor and host of the "Arroyo Grande" podcast Raymond Arroyo told Fox News Digital.

The movie is based on a Charles Dickens book called "The Life of Our Lord," which Dickens actually read to his children, as the character Dickens does in the movie. 

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"I know there is an enormous yearning in the audience for this kind of content that is both faith-inflected — doesn't mean that it has to be evangelical, or it has be, you know, beating you over the head with a religious message — but just that it acknowledges that faith is an element in human life and history," Arroyo, who noted he has produced faith-based content in the past, added. 

The movie also has an A-list voice cast, including Pierce Brosnan, Uma Thurman, Kenneth Branagh, Mark Hamill, Ben Kingsley, Forest Whitaker and Oscar Isaac. 

"It's an incredible cast they've assembled," Arroyo said, adding that it’s also an accessible framework "for families in that it's a father telling a story to a child."

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He said that the movie educates children "on two levels: You're teaching them not only about the faith that you adhere to, but you're weaving in this incredible, iconic novelist that you're introducing them to on some level, and it just becomes a frame of reference for families."

"They've smartly identified and understood that there is a massive underserved audience there of not only faithful people looking for depictions of faith on the screen and in their entertainment, but you also have families with very few options of places they can take their family to be entertained," he explained.

Arroyo said that, given the combination of the "yearning for religious content" and a movie that's "that's fun and engaging for a family and their timing before Easter," "The Kings of Kings" has got "winner written all over."

"When your audience wants something, you have to find a way to give it to them," he added. "There's clearly an audience and a market for this." 

Public relations expert Matt Wolf agreed, telling Fox News Digital, "You can make the argument that Americans are definitely looking for more faith in their entertainment, especially content that reflects their values and beliefs. Data also shows that this market is consistently growing. And what makes ‘The King of Kings’ particularly unique is that it's animated."

Doug Eldridge, another PR expert, said the film's buzz is "reflective both of its timing (a week before Easter) and the seeming shift in national sentiment, towards a more open-armed embrace of traditional Christian values and creative content."

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"For context, in 2004, ‘The Passion of the Christ’ generated $612 million at the global box office," he said. "In 2014, ‘Heaven Is for Real’ generated $101 million at the global box office, on a $2 million budget. Now, in 2025, an animated retelling of the story of Jesus — especially one featuring the voice talent of notable Hollywood names — is arriving at the right time, for the right audience."

Mel Gibson proved 20 years ago that faith-based movies can be successful "when Hollywood kind of turned its back on this audience and Gibson put his own money" towards "The Passion of the Christ," and "took a chance on a narrative that was, you know, set in a foreign tongue, you know, 2,000-year-old stories set in foreign tongue and broke box office records," Arroyo said. 

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"These works will rise or fall on their own merits," Arroyo said of faith-based entertainment. "If the narrative is tight, if the story is well imparted, you are dealing with an individual, Jesus Christ, who, for more than two millennia now, shaped all of human history in an incredible way. And I think that no matter whether you believe it or not, or whether you're an adherent of Christianity or not, there is something to be examined here in this person."

Arroyo continued: "There's a reason that he continues to arrest the imagination of artists through time, through history. And I think this is just another iteration. And I think it's kind of cool that they've decided to frame it within the very accessible Charles Dickens box. … It's a neat on-ramp for children into a story that is so profound and filled with such complexity."

Arroyo said that people don't want to be "lectured to" in a religious film. "They just want to be acknowledged and have their sensibilities respected. And that's what I think the best of these, what are called ‘faith-based projects,’ end up doing. They are high art in the case of, you know, ‘Passion of the Christ,’ and they can also be entertaining," he said.

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"The King of Kings" bowed Friday.