A look at ‘Selma’ at the box office

Though “Selma” was widely perceived as being snubbed during awards season, the Paramount Pictures film has marched onward and upward at the box office.

The film, which cost about $20 million to make, has pulled in $50.4 million since its limited release on Christmas Day. As of Sunday, its tenth weekend at the box office, the film was playing in 283 locations.

The biopic dramatizes Martin Luther King Jr. (played by David Oyelowo) in 1965 as he organizes and leads a voting-rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. It earned an A-plus grade from audience polling firm CinemaScore and wide praise from critics.

Thousands, including President Obama, are expected to return to Selma this weekend to commemorate of the 50th anniversary of the march, which became known as Bloody Sunday after marchers were attacked by authorities at the Edmund Pettus Bridge after leaving Selma.

Director Ava DuVernay and producer Oprah Winfrey joined other cast and crew members from the film in a similar march alongside residents of Selma in celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day in January.

Singer-songwriter John Legend, who won an Oscar with Common for the “Selma” song “Glory,” performed with the Tuskegee University Gospel Choir on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Paramount also announced in January that 275,000 middle and high school students would receive free tickets to see the film in 25 locations across the U.S., including Los Angeles.

“It’s a really incredible movie, because it’s playing so well in so many diverse places and has all of this organic, grass-roots energy around it,” Megan Colligan, the studio’s president of domestic marketing and distribution, told The Times in January. “It’s big cities, it’s small cities -- it’s touching people all over.”

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