The new religious movies ... bring together religiously skeptical movie fans and the core constituency of believers.
As Hollywood enters its annual autumnal "serious season," the movie industry prepares to greet several new religiously themed movies that promise to blur the lines between mainstream entertainment and the flourishing subculture of Christian media.
The most famous of these releases, Mel Gibson's wildly ambitious and already much-debated crucifixion epic The Passion, won't hit theaters for several months. But this week, moviegoers will be able to experience two other unconventional titles designed to bring believers back to the box office.
The Gospel of John, for instance, opens in 80 markets on Friday. This three-hour spectacle proudly includes every word from the New Testament Book of John, acted and narrated by acclaimed performers (Henry Ian Cusick and Christopher Plummer) and made with a $15 million budget. That same day, Luther arrives in North America, dramatizing the Protestant Reformation in a lavish $25 million costume drama starring Joseph Fiennes (of Shakespeare in Love) as Martin Luther, with supporting players such as Peter Ustinov and Alfred Molina.
Already in theaters is a more conventional project with prominent religious themes: The Fighting Temptations, with Cuba Gooding Jr. leading a Baptist church choir that includes pop sensation Beyonce Knowles. In a sensible attempt to connect this listless but pleasant picture with the churchgoing masses that might enjoy it, Paramount invested in a substantial advertising budget on Christian radio.
Meanwhile, in the world of TV, one of the most intriguing new shows, Joan of Arcadia on CBS, centers on a 16-year-old girl (Amber Tamblyn) who gets regular crime-solving advice from God himself.
These disparate projects all represent a new approach in trying to appeal to the 40% of Americans who regularly attend religious services, or the even larger group 80% that views the Bible as the inerrant (or at least "divinely inspired") word of God. Each weekend, the number of Americans who attend church or synagogue is more than three times larger than the number of customers who buy movie tickets.
In the past, ministries and Christian-based film companies released thrillers, melodramas and even comedies intended for people of faith. These projects, with such titles as The Omega Code, Left Behind or Revelation, achieved surprisingly strong box-office returns despite distinctly uneven artistic quality. On a smaller scale, the Mormon community in recent years has produced and supported highly professional, thought-provoking pictures, including God's Army, Brigham City and The Other Side of Heaven. These releases played strongly enough in Utah and other Mormon centers to ensure profitable returns on modest budgets.
The new religious movies, on the other hand, are aimed at crossover audiences. They use illustrious stars and aggressive marketing to bring together religiously skeptical movie fans and the core constituency of believers. These films also combine traditional Hollywood funding sources (with their unapologetic concern with the bottom line) and religious organizations (with their unapologetic concern about uplifting messages).
Most accounts about The Passion, for instance, emphasize Gibson's fervent Catholic faith and suggest that he underwrote the film's production costs himself. In fact, Gibson's movie about Christ's last hours is a project of his burgeoning company, Icon Entertainment. This very-much-for-profit enterprise not only produced nearly all of Gibson's recent films, but also helped distribute the slasher film Cabin Fever and soon unleashes a spoof called Gladiatress.
By the same token, The Gospel of John combines the resources and experience of hard-driving theatrical and movie producer Garth Drabinsky (Kiss of the Spider Woman and Ragtime on Broadway) with the vision of a Christian media company, Visual Bible International. On Luther, the American church-based insurance cooperative Thrivent Financial for Lutherans teamed with a solidly commercial German TV and movie company. (In the interest of full disclosure, I worked as a consultant during the editing of Luther.)
This combination of religious and financial motivations came much more naturally to the Hollywood of earlier generations, when producers instinctively understood that piety produced predictable profits. In the 1940s and '50s, Biblical blockbusters Samson and Delilah, David and Bathsheba, The Robe, The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur each became their years' top box-office hits. You hardly needed special financing from religious insurance companies, media ministries or devoutly committed stars to persuade studios to promote faith in pursuit of fortune.
Today, entertainment executives worry that any positive treatment of religious subjects will provoke controversy and condemnation, as demonstrated by the furious charges (of anti-Semitism) and countercharges (of hysterical overreaction) surrounding The Passion. Wary producers prefer to insert any positive religious messages unobtrusively, as in The Fighting Temptations.
Ironically, this means that in this deeply religious nation the princes of pop culture remain more comfortable with themes and imagery that are hostile to conventional faith. Twentieth Century Fox recently turned down the opportunity to distribute The Passion, despite past success in releasing Gibson's pictures. The same week the studio brass reached this decision, Fox opened a virulently anti-Catholic horror picture, called The Order (better identified as The Odor), about a secret, demonic cult within the church and a Satanic, perverted candidate for pope.
If the new wave of religious movies succeeds at the box office, it may help return old-fashioned faith-based projects to the center of pop culture. These films might also assure the vast potential audience of believers that they now can venture out to the multiplex on Saturday night and still show up in church, without guilt or regret, on Sunday morning.