The studio’s original press notes for the film, which had about $256 million in domestic ticket sales after its release in 2009, talked of sports, family love, race, and humanity. In that one, Sandra Bullock starred as Leigh Anne Tuohy, a real-life Southern Christian whose white family adopted a black child, Michael Oher, and joined his ride to football stardom. In cultivating faith viewers for movies that also seek a broader, mainstream audience, studios have often hidden their hand, from fear of losing the nonbelievers.Īmong the greatest crossover faith-based successes in modern memory was The Blind Side, from Warner Bros and Alcon Entertainment. One of those monitors more than 800 spiritually oriented people of various persuasions, while another takes the pulse of 10,000 “faith influencers,” including pastors and religious professionals nationwide.īut the search for cross-over hits is much trickier.
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That audience is so potent that Screen Engine/ASI recently augmented its mainstream movie tracking system with specifically faith-oriented tracking panels. More recently, Sony Pictures’ relatively low-budget Miracles From Heaven and Heaven Is For Real have become hits by drawing primarily on a values-oriented audience that is said to include about 52 million regular entertainment consumers between ages 18-59, according to statistics gathered by the NRG research firm. Sometimes, as with The Passion, the faith surge is so large, you don’t really need secular viewers. Bock is expected to deliver a video promotion, for instance, that will integrate Disney’s more secular lessons about gamesmanship and aspiration with sequences in which Katende discusses his faith.īut the faith promotions-whether in Christian outlets, or on social media circuits-have been kept largely apart from the mainstream, as Disney contends with a conundrum that has troubled Hollywood at least since Mel Gibson’s The Passion Of The Christ in 2004 revealed the enormous power hidden in the faith audience: How do you tap believers without turning off everyone else? In fact, Jonathan Bock and his Grace Hill Media, one of Hollywood’s most prominent faith and family consultants, had been working on Queen Of Katwe, as values-oriented advisers have done in the past with movies like The Help (an enormous hit) and The Finest Hours (a flop). Weeks before Ben-Hur opened, a faith consultant asked the audience at the Beverly Hills Purpose summit-sponsored by Variety, with Rogers & Cowan-how many of the assembled, movie-savvy believers were aware of Katwe’s Christian element. If Disney is soft-pedaling Queen Of Katwe’s Christian themes, that has nothing to do with the spectacular failure of Paramount’s Ben-Hur, an expensive action film that bore its faith, and its prominent pastoral backers, on its sleeve. But it is said to be somewhat downplayed, especially when compared with her open profession of religious belief in a Christian Broadcasting Network video report that pops up on YouTube, right after the almost entirely secular trailer for Disney’s film. But the reference amounts to less than a sentence and in life, Katende is pious enough to have daughters named Mercy and Hope.Īccording to people who have seen the movie, Mutesi’s Christianity is present in the film’s imagery and occasional prayerful thought. The Toronto festival’s official write-up, of course, mentions that Oyelowo’s character, based on the real Robert Katende, is a missionary. The various posters are alight with inspirational glow, and lined with exotic, African-themed chess imagery but the only prominent cross sits on the head of a chess piece. The faith element is missing, too, from a slideshow of Disney poster art on the IMDbPro website. Biblical and Faith-Based Movies: In Hollywood To Stay?
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