The shocker among all the films was Rocky Mountain Pictures’ political documentary 2016 Obama’s America which opened July 13th in very limited release and expanded into theaters across America this weekend. It wound up in 4th place Friday.

The shocker among all the films was Rocky Mountain Pictures’ political documentary 2016 Obama’s America which opened July 13th in very limited release and expanded into theaters across America this weekend. It wound up in 4th place Friday and 8th place for the weekend. That’s stunning because it was playing in 2/3 fewer theaters across North American than the other wider release films. (See below for more details). Due to its hot pre-sales, the pic proved frontloaded which explains why its ranking started out #1 and then fell steeply by end of Sunday. But the doc’s new cume of $9.0M makes it the #1 all-time biggest-grossing conservative political documentary, besting Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed’s $7.7M. And the 6th all-time biggest political documentary behind liberal docs by Michael Moore and Al Gore. (Neither ranking is adjusted for inflation or higher ticket prices.) 2016 Obama’s America is based on conservative author and commentator Dinesh D’Souza’s New York Times bestselling 2010 book The Roots Of Obama’s Rage and co-directed by D’Souza and John Sullivan and produced by Academy Award winner Gerald R. Molen (co-producer of Schindler’s List). In fact, Molen credits “learning some lessons” from Michael Moore for the film: “When he released Fahrenheit 9/11 in 2004 ahead of the election, it sparked intense debate.” And 2016 Obama’s America‘s success comes from equally savvy marketing on the eve of the Republican National Convention next week.

Exhibitors were reporting busloads arriving at theaters around the country in pre-organized trips to the pic. It also employed much of the same marketing techniques used to garner attention and support for faith-based films, understandable since the audience is overlapping. Its campaign included advertising nationally over the past two weeks on talk radio and cable news channels including Fox News Channel, A&E, History and MSNBC. ”I didn’t believe it when I first saw the film taking off in pre-sales on Tuesday,” an exhibition insider tells me. “Because there’s not a lot of new product that’s taking off.”