Published: Jan 25, 2024
Synopsis
Distributed by: Angel Studios | Release Date: 3/8/24 | Run Time: 145 Minutes
Drama | Inspirational. After witnessing disease and poverty in the slums of 1890’s New York, Italian Nun embarks on a daring journey to persuade the hostile New York City mayor to provide housing and healthcare for hundreds of orphaned children. True story of Frances Xavier Cabrini, whose mission to help others earned her the title of the Patron Saint of Immigrants..... Cristiana Dell’Anna, John Lithgow, David Morse
Screening Notes
I had zero idea what to expect or who the heck Frances Cabrini even was heading into this screening…as I left, I was embarrassed by my ignorance. I KNOW I won’t be alone. The opening 5-minutes is heartbreaking but necessary to the gritty storytelling behind Cabrini’s amazingly strong sense of character and unstoppable energy. Cabrini had to tackle blatant discrimination against women and strong anti-Italian sentiment --- particularly, indifference towards orphaned children. This fascinating story is brought to life by some quality acting by Dell’Anna as Cabrini, John Lithgow as the cafty and self-serving NYC Mayor and David Morse as the NYC Archbishop. This is not a faith-based film, it’s inspirational and hopeful.
By the way, I was stunned to learn that her memorial was attended by 120,000 folks filling Chicago’s Soldier Field and another 45,000 in NYC. Oh, and an interesting production fun-fact, for filming downtown Buffalo NY was transformed into 1890 NYC.
Boxoffice Estimate
It’s been very fun to see the birth of a new studio; so far, Angel has been masterful in staying true to the selective nature of their “inspirational” content. They’ve also been fairly successful in capturing specific studio brand recognition and loyalty among moviegoers…their following is still pretty modest but growing and builds in a nice “floor” when opening a title. With Cabrini, you also get to tout that the film’s Director is coming off a big win with Sound of Freedom. However, all this is meaningless unless you have generated product awareness AND interest with moviegoers…never an easy task, particularly with historical dramas, so Angel’s marketing team has a herculean task ahead.
The good news is, over the past 8 years the average PG13 title opening in Mar is 80% greater than Feb; the challenge (which may also turn into a marketing blessing) is, there are several other high-profile inspirational films releasing around the same time…Ordinary Angels (2/23), One Life (3/15), Arthur the King (3/22). All these titles play to the sweet-spot of small/mid-size markets and should strongly over-index, especially within the Central region of the country.
Summing all this up, my analysis points to an opening weekend estimated at $6M, with a range between $5M and $7M --- setting aside the stellar performance of Sound of Freedom, this is 20% greater than the average Angel title and in line with Father Stu and On the Basis of Sex. The expected 3.9x multiple points to strong word-of-mouth and a high Audience Score, producing a final gross between $21M and $26M and ranking as Angel’s 2nd highest grossing film to-date, behind Sound of Freedom.
Click to Watch Trailer !
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