Thursday, March 04, 2004
Will Hollywood green-light God?
With The Passion of the Christ faster out of the gate than The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King - $125.2 million in its first five days, $1.1 million more than the Oscar darling - Hollywood insiders are divided about the prospect of major-studio Bible tales filling the multiplex.
The blockbuster success of Mel Gibson's low-budget drama about the agonizing last hours of Jesus Christ leaves little doubt there is an audience hungry for films that feed the spirit.
"I happen to know of two biblical projects that [were] on hold, basically to see how The Passion opens," reports Barbara Nicolosi, who gave up her plans to become a nun and is now a film industry veteran who teaches screenwriters how to bring spirituality to their work.
"I think there are a lot of people who would like to do Bible stories who will now have a doorway into studio offices," Nicolosi says.
Gibson has not ruled out making more Bible films: "There are good stories in that book - it's worth looking into them," he told Variety.
"It's not out of the question," his Passion coproducer, Bruce Davey, added. "The people have spoken. It's what they want."
But the involvement of the major studios in religious films is by no means certain. He's boffo at the box office, but in Hollywood the Lord is too wholesome to be cool.
"It's not just about money," says writer-director Dave Alan Johnson, creator of Doc, a hit for the family-oriented Pax television network. "Especially for the creative executive ranks in the movie industry, it's about being hip and on the edge. Their standing in the club, how they are perceived by their peers, is the most important thing.
"It's the most insecure place on the planet," says Johnson, an Iowan who has lived in Los Angeles since 1980. "And they haven't got a clue about what most people in America value and want."
In the faith-based-film community, an alternative universe with its own festivals, production companies and distributors, Gibson's success is seen as a turning point in mass culture, if not a miracle.
The movie has already passed all modern Bible films at the box office, including DreamWorks' 1998 animated hit The Prince of Egypt, which took in $101.4 million. The 1956 spectacle The Ten Commandments is still the one to beat: Its $65.5 million domestic take translates into $789.9 million in today's dollars, according to boxofficemojo.com.
When Gibson went looking for financial backing, the moguls turned him down. Forced to pay his own way, he kept his budget to $30 million.
Linson says it wouldn't shock him in the least if some of the same executives who gave Gibson the brush-off now approach him with requests for another Gospel tale. "That's the way the business works," he says.
Before the film opened, analysts predicted it would make back its costs, but fade quickly at the box office. Its appeal was assumed to be limited to evangelicals, most in fly-over country. The fact that the movie was in Latin, Aramaic and Hebrew and unrelentingly violent made it unlikely that anyone would sit through it twice, analysts said.
"We're seeing repeat business already," Davey says.
People who are moved by the film aren't just telling others about it. They're returning to theaters with friends in tow.
"We're going across age groups and across ethnic groups," Newmarket president Bob Berney told Variety.
Newmarket is the independent distributor Gibson hired to get The Passion onto more than 4,600 screens in 3,000 theaters for its Ash Wednesday opening.
Confounding expectations, the film is playing well not just in the Bible Belt but in big cities, including New York and Los Angeles. The Passion is expected to draw audiences through Lent.
Can Hollywood repeat the phenomenon?
"The problem is, people who don't believe in the Bible tend to do a terrible job of re-creating it on film," Nicolosi says.
"Mel's film undeniably comes from a heart that has embraced the story of Jesus and that is theologically informed," Nicolosi says, though others - including Catholic theologians - have questioned his interpretation of Scripture. "There aren't a lot of other A-list directors in Hollywood for whom the Bible holds that same kind of place."
"I think biblical films are going to find their way back on the silver screen," said Melissa Richter, owner of Richter Strategic Communications in Toronto. Richter has promoted films including the Book of Revelation-based Left Behind: The Movie, a grassroots success for the faith-based movie company Cloud Ten Pictures.
"What remains to be seen is if major Hollywood studios are willing to take a leap of faith and produce films, either in partnership with a Christian film studio or alone, that will satisfy a massive Christian audience," she says.
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