Faith and Values Awards honor religous portrayals

The Falling Away THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER - By Randee Dawn - February 20, 2007 One might say former Los Angeles-based casting director Reuben Cannon found his true calling after moving to Atlanta and becoming a producer on writer-director Tyler Perry's ultrasuccessful urban comedies "Diary of a Mad Black Woman" (2005), "Madea's Family Reunion" (2006) and Lionsgate's current release "Daddy's Little Girls." "Hollywood does not understand the people who live between New York and California," says Cannon, who was the first to describe Perry's oeuvre as "gospel cinema." "Now that I live in the South, religion is probably the biggest activity here. The Bible Belt is not just a name. It is real. Hollywood just hasn't catered to the Christian faith-based market because it hasn't been necessary." Until recently, that is. Untold articles already have pontificated about the colossal boxoffice gross of Mel Gibson's 2004 Biblical epic "The Passion of the Christ" -- which took in upward of $370 million domestically -- and the similar performance of the arguably less overt but still Christian-themed "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," which earned roughly $292 million stateside after its December 2005 release. No doubt seduced by those staggering sums, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment announced in October the creation of a new label, FoxFaith, that will release faith-based films theatrically and on DVD. Two months later, Hollywood impresario Harvey Weinstein and his brother, Bob, announced that their nascent outfit the Weinstein Co. had entered into a multiyear first-look deal with Tulsa, Okla.-based Impact Entertainment, a Christian movie production and grass-roots marketing company, to produce and acquire theatrical and direct-to-video titles for the faith-based community. And there's more. David Kirkpatrick, an 18-year veteran of Paramount, recently left the studio to co-found Good News Holdings, an independent production and distribution company that is financing and adapting Anne Rice's novel "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt," as well as a slate of Christian-themed horror films. He also is starting up a Christian programming satellite channel. "What happens in New York and Los Angeles is we breathe rarefied air, and we believe we know what people want," says Kirkpatrick, whose resume also includes stints at Walt Disney Pictures and Touchstone Pictures as president of production. He recalls that while working for the studios, there was plenty of talk about how the executives should all pile in a bus and drive around the country "to find out what the hearts and dreams of everybody around were. It was a nice idea, though we never did it." What all of this amounts to is that religious conservatives have a newfound cachet in Hollywood thanks largely to their significant spending power, which is great news to someone like Ted Baehr, who publishes Movieguide magazine and, with the help of his staff, reviews and analyzes nearly every theatrically released film in a given year. Although the content of the reviews might surprise outsiders -- movies are evaluated in terms of how they hew to Christian worldviews, if any characters smoke or consume alcohol, if the message embraces a "humanist" worldview -- Baehr has the ear of studio executives at the Walt Disney Co. and New Line, the latter of which struggled with its recent foray into religious-themed cinema, "The Nativity Story." And when representatives at WMA need theological input for their plan to work with faith-based films, they dine with him. - - - - http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/film/features/e3iaf4b3145ad2a38c52641ac4c9e91a326 FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.