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Studios trying to market religion in order to make up for sagging audience...............
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Directors, studio executives and marketing experts have been seeking to entice an audience that made its power felt with "Passion," according to a report in the International Herald Tribune.
"Mel Gibson did us a service," said Bob Waliszewski, a media specialist with Focus on the Family, an evangelical group.
"The Hollywood elites' eyes widened big time. They said, 'I thought the church was dead. Is it possible that we don't know what's happening in state after state.' And the answer is a resounding yes."
There are an estimated 30 million evangelical and fundamentalist Christians in the U.S., and Hollywood -- mired in a prolonged slump at the box office -- is making a concerted effort to mollify and attract that audience.
Actor Peter Sarsgaard said that while shooting the Disney thriller "Flightplan," he was told to strike the word "Jesus" from his dialogue; the directors didn't want him to "take the Lord's name in vain."
Focus on the Family was one of about 30 groups invited to see an early trailer of Disney's "Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," based on C.S. Lewis' works, which Christian groups regard as an allegory of Christ's Resurrection.
Jonathan Bock, who founded Grace Hill Media to specialize in Christian marketing, was hired to help promote "Kingdom of Heaven" and "Cinderella Man" and is advising Sony on "The Da Vinci Code," based on a novel that challenges basic Christian dogma.
When Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie steal a neighbor's car in "Mr. & Mrs. Smith," a crucifix is seen hanging from the rear-view mirror. And in the next scene the two wear borrowed jackets that read "Jesus Rocks."
"We decided to make the next-door neighbor, whose crucifix it is, be hip, young, cool Christians," the movie's director, Doug Liman, told the New York Times news service. "It's literally in there for no other reason than I thought: 'This is cool.'"
Universal Studios screened the movie "Ray" for church groups as a way to build positive "buzz" for the film by word of mouth; the director had alread expurgated the script to mollify the film's backer, Philip Anschutz.
Marc Shmuger, vice chairman of Universal Pictures, said the Christian audience is "a well-formed community, it's identifiable, it has very specific tastes and preferences and is therefore a group that can be located and directly marketed
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