As we’ve seen before, particularly with The Passion of the Christ, a controversy-fueled religious film can do very good numbers at the box office. Though the hardcore religious might be upset for the vast number of liberties that Noah has taken with a classic Bible story, there’s no denying that those changes have resulted in a film that had much more appeal to mainstream audiences. Noah and his ark easily led the way this weekend with a strong debut.

Noah

With a $44 million debut, Noah is already director Darren Aronofsky’s second highest grossing film, behind just the piece of complete garbage that is Black Swan. But, anyway, this is a very strong start. The word of mouth doesn’t seem particularly great so far, but even still, getting over $100 million is all but guaranteed. Even with awful legs, Noah should find its way to somewhere around $110 million.

Dropping a respectable 52%, Divergent pulled in $26.5 million. That drop is better than what we usually see from big openings of young adult adaptations. All the Twilight movies (except Eclipse, but that opened on a Wednesday), most of the Harry Potter flicks and the first Hunger Games (Catching Fire’s second weekend drop was mitigated by Thanksgiving) all fell over 60%. That said, it’s not exactly a fair comparison since all those franchises opened bigger, and in most cases, much bigger than Divergent. But, still, Divergent is doing pretty well, as it has a total now of $95.3 million. It should finish around $130-140 million.

Muppets Most Wanted fell 33% and grossed $11.4 million. Through ten days, the disappointing sequel has amassed $33.2 million. A children’s film that’s doing much better, Mr. Peabody and Sherman, dropped 20%, raking in $9.5 million this weekend. Give it a $94.9 million total. Fifth place went to God’s Not Dead, which added a few hundred theatres, allowing it to slip just 2% to $9.1 million. For a film I never thought would even crack the top ten, its $22 million total is quite a surprise.

Expanding again and increasing 30%, The Grand Budapest Hotel grossed $8.8 million this weekend. It has a very solid $24.5 million total. In seventh, Sabotage bombed with just $5.3 million. Need for Speed dropped 45% to $4.3 million, bringing its sum to $37.8 million. Falling 49%, 300: Rise of an Empire pulled in $4.3 million. It crossed the century mark this weekend with a total now of $101.1 million.

Non-Stop dropped 37% and grossed $4.1 million. $85.2 million for the Liam Neeson flick. In summation, Noah led a pretty solid weekend, but this was basically just a warm up for next weekend when Captain America arrives and absolutely dominates all competition. Should be interesting. Until we meet again.