On its first day at retail, Fox Home Entertainment’s release of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ sold a whopping 4.1 million copies. According to Fox, statistics show that many consumers even bought more than one disc, setting the average at 1.8 copies per person. The phenomenal home video sales continue the record-breaking success of this religiously themed independent film, which no major studio would touch.
Released in theaters on Ash Wednesday, The Passion went on to gross more than $370 million domestically, making it the highest-grossing independent film of all time and one of the top-10 grossing movies ever. It has also earned the distinction of being the most successful R-rated film in history and the No. 1 foreign language pic released in the U.S. The film, starring Jim Caviezel as Jesus of Nazareth, was shot in Aramaic and Latin and features English and Spanish subtitles on DVD.
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