Machine Gun Preacher – the based-on-a-true-story of Sam Childers, a drug-dealing, gun-toting biker who found God and became an alleged mercenary saving African orphans – has crashed and burned at the U.S. box office.
With a reported $30 million budget, the movie, directed by Marc Forster and starring A-listers Gerard Butler and Michelle Monaghan, was a box office bust, earning only $420,000. At its peak, the film showed in 93 theaters nationwide in its third weekend – a relatively small release – but audiences simply were not turning out. Had they been filling up those theaters, the film surely would've expanded to wider release. Such decisions are purely financial – if it's making good money in limited release, films almost always end up going wider. If it's not, it generally gets pulled after a short run – which was the case for MGP, which was pulled from theaters on October 18, barely over three weeks after opening.
The film is now opening in the U.K. and other overseas locations; time ...
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