‘Passion’ Dollars Bring God to Hollywood

Paul Strand
CWNews

June 17, 2005

CBN.com – The Passion of The Christ was the unexpected smash blockbuster hit of 2004. It made nearly $400 million just in the United States—and that certainly got Hollywood’s attention.

Has The Passion's success persuaded Hollywood to "get religion"? I traveled there to find out and to ask the more important question, are they getting it right?

Many Christians, conservatives, and ‘red state’ residents look upon liberal, libertine Hollywood as enemy territory. Why would the moviemakers suddenly embrace them?

Phil Cooke is a producer and ministries consultant. He gave us a practical look at this. “Hollywood is not so much anti-Christian,” he said. “They just want to make a buck.”

Today, Lefty-dominated Hollywood may not like your politics, they may not like your culture, but they are always going to like your money. So, when church folk and others laid out more than half a billion dollars for a movie about Jesus Christ, it popped eyes wide open all over Tinseltown.

Barbara Nicolosi teaches screenwriting to Christians, and then helps them network in Hollywood. She told us, “There’s absolutely a new phrase in Hollywood these days. It’s called ‘Passion dollars.’ ”

Dallas Jenkins is a Hollywood producer. He’s also the son of Jerry Jenkins, a co-author of the Left Behind series. Dallas Jenkins said, “The Monday morning after the opening weekend of The Passion of The Christ, every studio in Hollywood was having meetings on how can we make a film that will appeal to this audience we didn’t know existed.”

Nicolosi explained, “We absolutely have a window. We’ve been getting calls for overt Christian material from the most unlikely places.”

Producer Phil Cooke, from his perspective of helping Christian ministries connect with Hollywood, told me, “I have two major clients, ministry clients, right now that are being courted by Hollywood to produce mainstream programs—right now.”

Nicolosi said she got calls soon after The Passion’s success. She said, “I asked, ‘Do you mean “family” entertainment?’ They said, ‘Not just family, but stuff that has religion in it.’ ”

Dallas Jenkins explained, “They’ve seen the success of The Passion of The Christ and VeggieTales, and they want to get in on this business.”

We tracked down big time Hollywood producer Ralph Winter in his offices on the Fox lot. He’s a Christian, but he’s also the man behind the X-Men movies and the upcoming Fantastic Four.

Winter said not only was Hollywood impressed by The Passion’s numbers, but also by how many Christians poured out to see A Walk to Remember. It wasn’t a movie made with Christians in mind, but it is the tale of a wayward teen turned around by his relationship with a pastor’s daughter, a young lady totally on fire for God.

Winter expressed realistic optimism by saying, “Everybody’s sort of putting their toe in the water to see, ‘How is it going to work? OK, Walk to Remember worked. How can we do something else like that?’ ”

Winter thinks Disney bringing C. S. Lewis’ epic Chronicles of Narnia to the big screen this December will boost the trend of faith-filled films. Winter said, “Narnia coming out at Christmas time is going to be huge.”

Pete Batali is executive producer and writer of That ‘70s Show.

Batali gave us another insider’s viewpoint. “There are a number of pilot scripts out there being filmed and decided on right now that Hollywood has ‘greenlit’ with the intention of possibly marketing to Christian audiences.”

It’s a fact the networks have ordered up 14 pilots for this fall season that have a supernatural theme. Nicolosi says that what’s good about this is it shows Hollywood’s acceptance that there is a spiritual dimension to life. Nicolosi explained that, “This represents a tremendous step forward from 130 years of Darwinism, which said, ‘There’s nothing but matter, man is only matter, he’s driven only by material appetites, and matter is all there is.’ ”

But there are big downsides to Hollywood’s new spiritualism emphasis. For one, much of this spiritualism is occult, not Christian, more like NBC’s The Medium—she talks to dead people—rather than CBS’s Joan of Arcadia—she talks to God.

Nicolosi realized that too and said we’d see more of “people who have supernatural powers or gifts, and demonic kinds of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and variations on Charmed.”

In fact, the show Revelations tries to straddle these worlds of the occult and Christianity. They have satanists battling a nun over a present day baby Jesus.

But Dallas Jenkins explained, “Revelations is definitely an attempt by NBC to appeal to a Christian market.”

What worries all the Christians we spoke to is how weirdly Hollywood will probably handle its TV shows for Christian believers.

Nicolosi probably hit the mark when she observed, “Basically, Jesus in Hollywood—the one their going to like—is a politically correct, liberal Democrat and hates the Christian Right.”

Phil Cooke concluded, “So we’re going to see some shows coming out of Hollywood that are pretty wacky, in the guise of trying to reach that ‘spiritual crowd’ out there.”

Aidan Quinn will star in one of these shows, the Book of Daniel.

Nicolosi gave us an actual example: “There’s a minister who’s got a drug-smoking son, and he himself is addicted to pills. But Jesus actually comes and sits in his car and talks to him.”

Dallas Jenkins also spoke from real experience. “The scripts I’ve seen and pitches I’ve heard are not going to have much appeal to Christian audiences because they’re just so … like listening to music that’s in the wrong key,” he said.

Hollywood seems to be grasping the message that religious-themed movies and TV shows can certainly make money. But Hollywood is very obviously struggling to get the faith message right.

In the other half of our story, we'll see how Christians are helping Hollywood find that out.

Translate Page