"Son of God," shocked Hollywood and mainstream critics, Sunday with an astounding $26.5 million at the box office coming in at No. 2 on the list of top movies for this week, beating out the beloved animated flick "The LEGO Movie."   

BoxOffice.com predicted $17.5 million in weekend sales for "Son of God," after the film's original History Channel miniseries averaged 11.7 million viewers per week and the Christian film superseded the box offices expectations.

The film's success found mainstream movie critics and the movies audience at odds with ratings. Rottentomatoes.com gave the film 25 percent from critics, while 82 percent of fans like it.

The last time a big budget movie was made about the life of Jesus was almost 50 years ago in the 1965 film The Greatest Story Ever Told, and it has been ten years since Passion of Christ shattered Blockbuster office records, depicting the emotional account of the last three-days of Jesus' life, and now Son of God provides an all-around acceptable, cliff notes version of the saviors life.

Pastors and Christian leaders, including Mega-Church Pastor Rick Warren, rented theaters all over America in support of the premiere of the Mark Burnett and Roma Downey film.

Producer Burnett told Newsmax recently that he trusts the movie will have power to evangelize to the entire world.

"We believe in the decades to come, people in remote places will find Jesus through watching this movie on their iPhones," Burnett said. "People in developing countries are getting telephones before they're getting televisions. And they can watch this, in the decades to come, on their phone."

Conrad Ostwalt, a professor who studies religion and the secularization of popular culture as it relates to film, literature, music, and art, predicted that "Son of God" would have great potential for success in a society that is bombarded with secularism more than ever over the past few decades.

"We don't see in the news or in our political leaders an overt religiosity that we may have seen a half a century ago. Maybe the popularization of religious films signals a new outlet for meeting spiritual and religious needs of society," said Ostwalt

Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for box-office tracker Rentrak, told The Washington Post, "If the expectation is that Hollywood should make more movies like this, then the audiences who want these movies have to vote with their dollars." Adding, "It's only then that Hollywood will wake up and see this as a viable genre that people will want to see."