A crowded box office and lukewarm reviews are some of the challenges facing the apocalyptic drama Blindness, which opens Friday alongside other festival fare including Larry Charles’ satirical comedy Religulous.

The Canadian copro Blindness, adapted from José Saramago’s award-winning book by Don McKellar — who also stars alongside Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo — bows on a colossal 1,700 screens in North America. It will play in 98 theaters in Canada through Alliance Films. Miramax is the U.S. distributor.

The film, about a mass epidemic of blindness, has been re-cut several times since it opened the Cannes Film Festival in May to less than stellar reviews, particularly over Danny Glover’s narration, which some said was too much.

An Alliance spokesperson says most of the narration has been removed, and that the version that screened at the Calgary and Vancouver film festivals will play on Friday.

Reviews have been mixed, with Variety noting the film ‘rarely achieves the visceral force, tragic scope and human resonance’ of Saramago’s novel, while Toronto’s Eye Weekly writes that ‘an air of tentativeness hampers the whole endeavor.’

The film has also faced a backlash from blind communities in the U.S. and Canada, which are staging protests on its opening night. The Canadian Federation of the Blind the National Federation of the Blind in the U.S. claim the film is offensive and reinforces negative stereotypes about the sightless. McKellar has said that the protests are ‘disappointing’ but not unexpected.

Meanwhile, TVA Films is bowing Religulous on 84 screens. The film follows comedian Bill Maher as he travels around the world satirically interviewing people about God and religion.

Mongrel Media is quietly rolling out the buzzed-about Rachel Getting Married, from director Jonathan Demme, which opens at Toronto’s Varsity theater, with plans to expand to Montreal and Vancouver on Oct. 17, and the rest of Canada in early November.

The busy weekend will also see various other wide U.S. releases, including the family comedy Beverly Hills Chihuahua, on 3,000 North American screens via Disney, and the MGM comedy How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, starring Kirsten Dunst and Simon Pegg. TIFF picks Flash of Genius and Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist are also opening wide through Universal and Sony, respectively.