I don't know if any of you guys do this, but I play around with movie stocks on www.hsx.com.

I'm not going to bother getting into the details, but currently Mel Gibson's "Passion" is trading at a price that estimates that it will make over $60M in it's first month of release at the US box office. That would put its earning above current movies like Mystic River, Paycheck, and School of Rock.

Do think this movie will really be THAT big?

I'm not sure what to think. Religious movies rarely do very well. Omega Code and the VeggieTales movies both had a lot of buzz within parts of the American Christian community and even showed up on weekend top ten box office lists, but ultimately they didn't perform exceptionally.

On the other hand, the Passion's getting incredible reviews, even from non-Christians (see aintitcool.com for reviews by non-church goers). Its trailer is currently ranked #3 on ML's list and has been on the top five of ML's download list since July (it's currently the #1 download). Yahoo movies says its Passion page is the fourth most requested (see here).

Is this movie going to make a lot of money for Mel? Or is this all just good hype? If it does make a lot of money and acclaim for Mel, do you think studios are going to jump onto the bandwagon and make more biblical epics?

Curious to hear your thoughts.