Monty Python's Life of Brian that the council had not seen the film, and had based their opinion on what they had been told by the Nationwide Festival of Light, a grouping with an evangelical Christian base, of which they knew nothing. Some bans continued into the 21st century. In 2008, Torbay Council finally permitted the film to be shown after it won an online vote for the English Riviera International Comedy Film Festival. In 2009, it was announced that a thirty-year-old ban of the film in the Welsh town of Aberystwyth had finally been lifted, and the subsequent showing was attended by Terry Jones
Monty Python's Life of Brian grossing British film in North America that year. Released on 8 November 1979 in the UK, the film was the fourth highest-grossing film in Britain in 1979. On 30 April 2004, "Life of Brian" was re-released on five North American screens to "cash in" (as Terry Jones put it) on the box office success of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ". It grossed $26,376 ($5,275 per screen) in its opening weekend. It ran until October 2004, playing at 28 screens at its widest point, eventually grossing $646,124 during its re-release. By comparison, a re-release of "Monty Python and the