Monday, March 15, 2004
Hollywood Rethinking Films of Faith After 'Passion'
As the overwhelming success of "The Passion of the Christ" reverberates through Hollywood, producers and studio executives are asking whether the movie industry has been neglecting large segments of the American audience eager for more openly religious fare.
During the weekend the film took in another $31.6 million, increasing the total box office to $264 million in nearly three weeks, according to Exhibitor Relations, which tracks ticket sales.
Unlike many blockbusters, the movie has not dropped precipitously soon after a huge opening weekend. It is expected to finish its domestic run taking in well over $300 million in box-office receipts, easily outstripping big-budget movies like "The Hulk" or any in the "Matrix" series.
That number will only swell when the film is released internationally, beginning in Europe and Latin America in the next few weeks. The foreign audience is expected to be huge. And 20th Century Fox is in negotiations to distribute the DVD and videocassette, which is also expected to be immensely profitable.
"You can't ignore those numbers," said Mark Johnson, a veteran film producer. "You can't say it's just a fluke. There's something to be read here."
The movie's box-office success has been chewed over in studio staff meetings and at pricey watering holes all over Hollywood, echoed in interviews with numerous executives in the last week. In marketing departments the film is regarded as pure genius; its director, Mel Gibson, is credited with stoking a controversy that yanked the film from the margins of the culture to center stage, presenting it as a must-see.
In the first days after its release on Feb. 25 (Ash Wednesday) "The Passion" drew large numbers from religious groups whose members had bought blocks of tickets. Since then exit polls conducted by the movie's distributor, Newmarket Films, have found that young moviegoers have made up much of the audience.
"The R rating is limiting younger kids, but it is getting teens and college kids," Newmarket's president, Bob Berney, told Variety last week.
The movie is also doing well among the traditionally religious Latino and African-American audiences, Mr. Berney said.
Last week a Gallup poll found that 11 percent of Americans had seen the movie and that 34 percent more said they planned to see it in theaters. The poll, based on a statistically representative sample of 1,005 adults nationwide, found that older people were less likely to see the movie and that people who attended church at least once a month were more likely to see it than those who did not.
One indication of how Hollywood might find a middle road is in the recent announcement by the Walt Disney Company of its plan to make a big-budget movie of "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," the beloved children's book by C. S. Lewis, an influential Christian writer. The rights to make a movie of the book are owned by a production company owned by the media mogul Philip Anschutz, a practicing Christian.
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