I’ll put on my Hollywood hat just for a minute so I can lead a chorus of righteous laughter at the colossal failure of the persecuted Hollywood conservatives behind An American Carol.

Here’s how it fared over the weekend, when stacked up against Bill Maher’s Religulous:

Film Box Office Gross # Screens Average
American Carol $3,810,000 1,639 $2,325
Religulous $3,500,000 502 $6,972

What does this tell us?

Both films were in their first week of release, which means that it’s apples to apples. Both had the benefit of their opening week marketing pushes.

Note that Religulous, however, was on less than one third of the screens that American Carol was. Which means that An American Carol should by all rights have done three times the boxoffice of Religulous. But it didn’t — gross box office receipts were largely the same.

The per-screen average of Religulous was three times that of An American Carol. Three times as many people showed up in each theater to see it.

As Atrios notes, there’s no way that the wingnuts can argue that their humor free comedy didn’t get a good push.

Bottom line: Hollywood is in the business of making money. There’s no conspiracy going on against conservatives. When moviegoers have to vote with their dollars, it’s just that nobody wants to see their shit.