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It wasn\u2019t long ago that the documentaries at the top of the box office each year were also the films on everyone\u2019s lips<\/a>. Think of Hoop Dreams<\/em> or Roger and Me<\/em> or, more recently, Won\u2019t You Be My Neighbor?<\/a>:<\/em> movies that attracted a diverse audience, garnered awards attention, and made a respectable amount of money.<\/p>\n The list of this year\u2019s top-grossing docs<\/a> is a very different story. Instead of the next Grey Gardens<\/em> or Grizzly Man,<\/em> 2024\u2019s top 10 is a hodgepodge of faith-oriented films, a movie in praise of Donald Trump,<\/strong> and glorified trolls clearly intended to appeal to those on the starboard side of moderate. A few celebrity-driven projects and a compilation of cat videos round out the list. At the very top, where Anthony Bourdain<\/a> and David Bowie<\/a> once perched, you\u2019ll find Am I Racist?,<\/em> a bizarro-world<\/a> Borat<\/em>\u2013meets\u2013Bowling for Columbine<\/em><\/a> from conservative media outlet the Daily Wire.<\/p>\n The vast gap between what many of us think of as prestige-style documentaries and what actually charts at the box office these days is fairly new, according to most industry experts I spoke with. Where they disagree is why<\/em> that is. Some say studios don\u2019t want to put more traditional docs in theaters, preferring the lower-risk path of plopping them straight onto streaming. Others blame savvy targeted social media campaigns, the same kind used to spread misinformation and sow political strife<\/a>. Still more argue that for too long, filmmakers have been out of touch with the interests of the American population, and that this year\u2019s box office reflects that divide. They might all be right.<\/p>\n \u201cThe documentary marketplace is overflowing right now,\u201d says film business analyst Jeff Bock.<\/strong> \u201cYou could call it the golden age of documentaries.\u201d Jaie Laplante,<\/strong> artistic director of DOC NYC\u2014the country\u2019s largest documentary film festival\u2014agrees: \u201cDocumentaries\u2019 golden age continues, it just continues in a new phase.\u201d For that, we can thank streaming platforms, which make nonfiction films easier than ever to distribute and market straight to audiences. \u201cI can\u2019t imagine trying to market all those theatrically,\u201d Bock says of the increasing number<\/a> of documentaries available to stream.<\/p>\n Films about widely known quantities are an exception to the rule. \u201cUnless you\u2019re tied to an event like a Taylor Swift,<\/strong> it\u2019s going to be almost impossible to pull off\u201d a successful nonfiction theatrical release, Bock says, referring to the singer\u2019s 2023 Eras Tour film<\/a>. (While not classified as a documentary, that movie was 2023\u2019s 11th-highest-grossing film<\/a> domestically.) \u201cThink about where media is today: It really is dominated by IP. They know Jesus, they know God, they know the Blue Angels. They know cats. These are things that we\u2019re familiar with and will spend time and money on.\u201d Documentaries that play into that need by apparently celebrating patriotism\u2014or dismissing cultural changes\u2014have a built-in audience.<\/p>\n For studios and distributors, \u201cwhatever gets butts in seats is what really matters,\u201d says Bock. One company that appears to have figured out that equation is Fathom Events (which, as of January, will be renamed<\/a> \u201cFathom Entertainment\u201d), a distributor co-owned by the country\u2019s three biggest theater chains: Cinemark, Regal, and AMC. \u201cThis company was first started years ago on the concept that we would try to put butts in seats Monday through Thursday,\u201d CEO Ray Nutt<\/strong> tells me from his Colorado office, which is decorated with framed posters of theatrical releases including The Chosen<\/em>\u2014a fictionalized account of the life of Jesus Christ, which Fathom brought to theaters to great success<\/a>. \u201cThat has changed significantly. I\u2019ll be honest with you, it\u2019s probably easier to get inventory in movie theaters when the commercial product is down.\u201d<\/p>\n Fathom has taken advantage of struggling theaters by slotting in films like Jesus Thirsts: The Miracle of the Eucharist,<\/em> a movie in praise of the Catholic faith that boasts one of Mark Wahlberg<\/strong><\/a>\u2019s brothers as a producer. Unless something happens in the next two weeks, it will close out the year as the third-most-popular nonfiction film at the box office, just behind Piece by Piece<\/a>,<\/em> Pharrell Williams<\/strong>\u2019s LEGO-infused bio-documentary. (Vanity Fair<\/em> reached out to representatives for Jesus Thirsts<\/em> for comment, but did not receive a response as of publication time.)<\/p>\n Another Fathom release, The Ark and the Darkness,<\/em> claims to prove that the Biblical account of an all-encompassing flood (the ark in the title is Noah\u2019s, not Indiana Jones\u2019s<\/a>) is true. It\u2019s being counted as the fifth-highest-grossing documentary of the year.<\/p>\n While Nutt\u2019s theatrical partners clearly deserve credit for getting niche films in front of larger audiences, there are other ways to build audiences for religious films like these as well. The company actively courts religious groups outside regions where Fathom\u2019s faith-focused films are playing. \u201cWe license that content to them, to the church, and then the churches actually show it,\u201d Nutt says. \u201cThat is something that we feel really, really good about doing, to make sure that people in those smaller communities that don\u2019t have a movie theater in a reasonable distance from their homes can see our content.\u201d<\/p>\n The church screenings, he adds, are \u201cnot a giant revenue thing for us\u201d\u2014but this strategy clearly can goose a movie\u2019s box office. For a genre where most films sell tickets in the thousands (if that), any group ticket sales can be pretty significant.<\/p>\n Proponents of faith-based films also use social media ads encouraging email campaigns. Rebecca Fons,<\/strong> the director of programming for both Chicago\u2019s Gene Siskel Film Center and the Iowa Theater<\/a> in the small Midwestern town of Winterset, has been on the business end of those campaigns. \u201cYou can imagine that I program really different films here in Chicago than I do in Iowa,\u201d she says. At the latter venue, she\u2019s been urged to show \u201cTrump content\u2014or, you know, Catholic content or Christian content.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n