A new biblical movie starring Oscar Isaac has pulled off a box office achievement that hasn’t been accomplished in more than two and a half decades. Isaac is an Emmy-nominated actor with a wide variety of movies and television shows under his belt. He is perhaps best known for portraying Poe Dameron in the newest Star Wars trilogy, but other notable roles of his include portraying Marc Spector in Moon Knight, Duke Leto Atreides in Dune, and Llewyn Davis in Inside Llewyn Davis.

However, before any of those Oscar Isaac movies were made, he held his first major film role in 2006’s The Nativity Story, a live-action biblical adaptation telling the story of the birth of Jesus, in which he played Joseph opposite Keisha Castle-Hughes as Mary. The majority of reviews for the movie were negative, earning it a 37% score on Rotten Tomatoes with an average rating of 5.6 out of 10. It was also a box office disappointment, grossing $46.4 million against its $35 million budget. Now, nearly two decades later, his newest biblical adaptation is so far performing much better.

The King Of Kings Has Broken A Record

The Movie Stars Oscar Isaac As Jesus

2025’s The King of Kings has broken a major box office record. The new animated movie depicts the life of Jesus Christ (Oscar Isaac) as told by Charles Dickens (Kenneth Branagh) to his son Walter (Roman Griffin Davis), adapting Dickens’ own children’s book The Life of Our Lord. The star-studded voice cast of the movie, which was written and directed by Seong-ho Jang, also includes Forest Whitaker as Peter, Uma Thurman as Catherine Dickens, Mark Hamill as King Herod, Pierce Brosnan as Pontius Pilate, and Ben Kingsley as High Priest Caiaphas.

The King of Kings has a 97% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, which is the best ever for an Oscar Isaac movie.

Per Deadline, as of Saturday morning, The King of Kings is projected to earn a 3-day total of $17.6 million at the domestic box office by the end of its opening weekend. This will mark the best opening weekend of all time for an animated biblical movie, beating the 1998 DreamWorks classic The Prince of Egypt ($14.5 million). Other notable examples of the subgenre include 2017’s The Star ($9.8 million), and 2002’s Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie ($6.2 million).

Our Take On The King Of Kings Opening Weekend Record

Angel Studios’ Techniques Are Controversial

While the box office performance of The King of Kings is record-breaking, it may eventually face claims of being artificially inflated due to the same ticket-selling technique Angel Studios used for their 2023 hit Sound of Freedom, which grossed $251 million against its $14.5 million budget. For both movies, the distributor has employed their “Pay it Forward” program, which allows ticketbuyers to purchase tickets for others, though information on whether all of those tickets were actually collected or used by future viewers remains opaque.