Hollywood losing faith in spiritual movies

By Gail Schiller

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - When director Andrew Adamson began promoting "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian," which opens in theaters Friday, he prepared for specific questions about the Christian audience that helped 2005's "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" gross $292 million at the domestic box office.

"Religion seems more important here in the U.S. than anywhere," Adamson says. "As I'm promoting it here, everyone is asking me about the religious aspect. When I promoted it in France, everyone was asking why Americans are so obsessed with the religious aspect."

Indeed, Adamson's first "Narnia" came on the heels of 2004's "The Passion of the Christ," which grossed $370 million domestically and tipped studios to a potentially untapped audience of faithful moviegoers.

But in the years since, studios that have waged extensive faith-based campaigns have garnered mixed results, leading some in Hollywood to lose faith in the practice.

Universal arranged advance screenings for religious leaders for 2007's "Evan Almighty" and January's "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie." But attendance was not particularly heavy from religious audiences, and "Evan Almighty" ended up a costly bomb.

"From our experiences marketing to faith-based communities, we believe that moviegoers searching for appropriate entertainment don't exist independent from the mainstream," says Adam Fogelson, Universal's president of marketing and distribution. "In fact, they are the mainstream and depend on traditional marketing to inform decisions about which films seem right for themselves and their families."

Faith-based campaigns have failed to deliver big numbers even for such recent Christian-themed films as "The Nativity Story" (2006, $38 million) or "Facing the Giants" (2006, $10 million). For that reason, several marketing executives say they are shying away from faith-specific outreach.

"After 'Passion,' everybody met with all of these faith-based marketing companies, and they were going to help us all change the world," a senior studio marketing executive says. "We hired them a few times and it wasn't anything you could track or put your finger on, and it didn't seem super valid, so I'd rather spend my money elsewhere."

Even some Christian entertainment companies say that studios have wasted money on overbroad campaigns rather than targeting particular denominations.

"You wouldn't spend all your marketing dollars to market a NASCAR film to a wrestling fan or vice versa," says Byron Jones, managing partner of faith-based Pure Flix Entertainment. "Yet we have seen many releases marketed with a template marketing plan. The money is being spread too thinly across too many areas."

Many experts now believe "Passion's" success was an anomaly and that mistakes have been made trying to replicate that phenomenon.

"A big misunderstanding is that the faith audience is this one monolithic audience, and if you get to a point where you have this magical database, and you just press a button, the buses will start pulling up in front of the churches," says Micheal Flaherty, president of Walden Media, which produces the "Narnia" films.

Walden has seen success with such faith-friendly films as 2007's "Bridge to Terabithia" ($82 million) and 2006's "Charlotte's Web" ($83 million). And despite grossing only $21 million, exit polls on "Amazing Grace" -- produced by Walden's sister label Bristol Bay Prods. -- showed that word-of-mouth marketing, including to the faith-based community, was just as effective as traditional advertising even though much more was spent on the latter, Flaherty says.

Others in Hollywood remain similarly faithful.

Tyler Perry's films and his TBS sitcom "House of Payne" have benefited from faith-based marketing in urban markets.