
The huge box-office successes of THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST and THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA have Hollywood mining religious congregations for possible new audiences. The 2006 Tribeca Film Festival, which just concluded in New York, sponsored a panel where film industry insiders talked about the apparent new relationship between Hollywood and religion. Panelists included: actor Cuba Gooding Jr.; film producer Ralph Winter; Walden Media President Michael Flaherty; and Grace Hill Media President Jonathan Bock. Kim Lawton of RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY led the conversation. Footage courtesy of the Tribeca Film Festival.
Here are some highlights from the discussion.
KIM LAWTON: Certainly there's a lot of buzz going around right now that there's this new partnership between Hollywood and religion.
CUBA GOODING JR. (ACTOR): Hallelujah.
LAWTON: Hallelujah, and that's exactly what some of the movie studios are thinking and hoping as they are contemplating the almighty dollar that they hope this might bring in. Is there some new path to salvation that we're seeing in the film industry? Has Hollywood seen the light? Or is this just a lot of hype?
MICHAEL FLAHERTY (PRESIDENT, WALDEN MEDIA): I think so. I think there's definitely an interest. One of the mistakes that people make is they think that they can just throw in a church scene here, throw in a bit of Scripture here. They're losing the point that it's all about a great story. And so, if it doesn't exist in the DNA of the story, you can't just dab it on like makeup.
LAWTON: Are we talking about big Bible stories on the big screen, or are we talking about something different? Are we talking about stories that may not be explicitly religious, but in some way have values that may talk about things like redemption or forgiveness in a less explicitly or overtly religious way?

MR.
FLAHERTY: I like to think it's the latter. And, you know, it's like the Apostle Paul said at the church of Philippi: Look, whatever's good, whatever's true, whatever's praiseworthy, this is where you need to be putting your focus, this is where you need to be putting your minds. I think that there's a lot of people in the faith community who are looking for those films that are really inspirational and uplifting and might not necessarily be considered, you know, deliberately religious per se.
JONATHAN BOCK (PRESIDENT, GRACE HILL MEDIA): That's the first time the Apostle Paul's been quoted at the Tribeca Film Festival.
LAWTON: And the roof didn't cave in. Ralph, what kinds of changes are you seeing?
RALPH WINTER (PRODUCER, X-MEN): THE PASSION [OF THE CHRIST] kicked the door open for these kinds of projects. But I think they have to be entertaining. No one wants to be preached to in a movie theater.
LAWTON: Cuba, what about for you as an actor? Are you seeing more scripts? Are people approaching you saying hey, you know, there are some areas out there that maybe haven't been explored, that maybe are underserved?
MR.
GOODING: I so laugh at Hollywood. It's funny. They go where the money is. Okay, PASSION OF THE CHRIST made a helluva lot of money, no pun intended, and now everybody's scurrying to have the next faith-based project that goes through the roof. The audience has been there for years. Tens of millions of people rally behind their pastors and their priests.

MR.
BOCK: It's an audience that they have just discovered. The statistics are overwhelming. For example, on Sunday, 43 percent of America was in church. Forty-three percent. And for studios not to recognize that that's an audience now, it's like a studio saying, "We're not making movies to men. No movies to men." What you are starting to see is studios are starting to dip their toe in the water. For example, over at Fox they're making $2 million movies. I think you can say that all of the studios at this point are deeply committed to making $500,000 to $1 million movies. It truly is inevitable market forces at work. You've got 340,000 churches out there. Worldwide, there's probably around 2 billion Christians when you add up all the different Protestant denominations, and you add up all the Catholics. So that's a big, big audience, and they want it.
LAWTON: Is there one franchise, one brand, one type of movie that people of faith want to see?
MR.
GOODING: I brought the script with me.
MR.
BOCK: This is going to be, for Hollywood, an evolutionary process where they're just going to have to figure it out. And I actually think it's [not] all that different than what African Americans went through with seeing them come from, you know, there was sort of these blaxploitation films that were made for very small dollars. And then that kind of grew into "maybe we can make a buddy comedy" kind of thing. I think that's what we're going to see here, too -- low-budget Christian films that were -- let's call them "Godsploitation" films.
MR.
WINTER: Christian or not, I think THE PASSION got the entire culture talking about Jesus. It didn't matter whether you saw the film, liked the film, hated the film. That's what people talked about at the water cooler on Monday after the weekend. And the same thing is going to happen, I think, with THE DA VINCI CODE. Are Christians going to engage? Try to boycott? I'm in favor of engaging. Let's engage: What is that about? Is that true? What is that based on? Let's get into that conversation. Don't we all want to do this? We all want to be involved and make films that get into meaningful dialogue in the culture. That's why we do it.
MR.
BOCK: When's the next time in pop culture that people are going to care what really happened at the Council of Nicaea?
LAWTON: How do you appeal to a mainstream audience when you're also trying to reach out to this religious market?
MR.
WINTER: I think you've got to find those mainstream stories. It's about finding those stories that are intrinsic to the human journey, that demonstrate that there's a God and there's another set of values, and how do we respond and live and get through that?