Christian Films: A Rising Star in Hollywood

By Sarah K. Cron and Robin Mazyck

CBN News

November 24, 2006

CBNNews.com - Hollywood is turning to God for inspiration, and they're giving Him a front-row seat. And not just for this Christmas season.

Many have called Mel Gibson's blockbuster The Passion of the Christ a wake up call to Hollywood executives thirsty to cash in on the Christian film market.

Most notably, 20th Century Fox has established a new FoxFaith label which will produce up to a dozen faith-based films a year, the Los Angeles Times reported in September. At least six of these will be released in major theater chains across the nation.

But some wonder if Christian filmmakers and producers will be able to cash in on the opportunity to affect people's hearts by showing truth through storytelling on the big screen.

Faith Counts at the Box Office

Along with a slew of family-oriented films being released this holiday season, the story of the birth of Jesus Christ will be played in more than 3,000 theaters beginning Dec. 1.

The Nativity Story has been called a prequel to Gibson's Passion. As with other faith-based films released, it is expected to be a big box office draw.

"The movie industry clearly understands that spiritual films do well at the box office and Christian films do better, because they are releasing these films," said Ted Baehr, founder and publisher of MovieGuide, an advocacy group that monitors the entertainment industry.

Baehr said that films with a strong Christian worldview average about 10 times better than non-Christian films. A 10-year study his group recently completed revealed that Christian movies do far better than films with strong sexual content. The report was based on an examination of almost 2,700 films that topped the box office from 1996 through 2005.

"The more Christian you get, the better it does at the box office," he said. "I don't know anyone in Hollywood that holds to the view that Christian films don't do well at the box office."

For example, by the time The Chronicles of Narnia left theaters, it had grossed more than $740 million worldwide. That compares with Brokeback Mountain, a movie about two gay cowboys released on the same day. It made less than $180 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo.

Mainstream production companies are hearing this message loud and clear.

In step with FoxFaith, Sony Pictures recently teamed up with Peter Lalonde, the Christian filmmaker behind the "Left Behind" films for the latest installment in the series Left Behind III: the World at War, The Christian Science Monitor reported.

The Play is the Thing

Still, many in the industry believe Christian movies still have much further to go.

"Christians are starving for content," said Jay Black, instructor in the School of Cinema Television at Regent University. "There are a lot of Christian movies which can be called good from a content perspective, but are not at all good from a technical perspective."

Christian actor, comedian David White agrees.

"It seems the 'Christian movie' genre carries a carefully earned stigma of mediocrity marked by a steadily growing collection of low budget, poorly produced films," he said.

Black referenced the recent One Night with The King, which did well at the box office, but did poorly with the critics.

"Even though it was a step up quality wise …there's still a step up that needs to be made as far as the mastery of story telling so that it's not didactic, it's not preachy," he said. "If the script is poorly written, the movie will not be good, period."

"Story telling is an art, and it takes a lot of time to master," Black said. "I really believe …that when we get people like Mendelson, the great composer of the ancient days, who immersed themselves in the arts, they believed that God would use them if they mastered the art, and God did."

A Window of Opportunity

Baehr, who grew up in the entertainment industry, told of how a friend of his came to faith in Christ through the movie Chariots of Fire, which was directed by a Jew and played by a homosexual.

"You know, God uses a lot of things to change people's hearts and minds," he said. "People come to Christ through movies that present the Gospel in a way that reaches them. It's always God. It doesn't have anything to do with us."

And it is the hope of reaching people with the Gospel that keeps the dream of making movies alive for many Christians.

"I really believe that this particular kind of vision that God is planting into Christians now is to get back into the arts and get into film making," Black said.

Companies like Fox, Sony Pictures, and Walden Media are all hoping to profit from that dream. But Baehr said the opportunity for Christians could be limited. While the movie industry may be taking a pro-Christian stance, the culture "seems to be moving into an increasingly post-Christian culture," he said.

Studios will be producing Christian films until there is no longer an audience for them, Baehr said. "The bottom may fall out of the marketplace if the next generation is not reached with the gospel of Jesus Christ."