Had Superman Been Born in a Manger

We’re living at an interesting time where business is colliding with things like art and religion as never before. As businesses seek to maximize profits, they’re discovering new markets and commoditizing everything...including religion. Because of The Passion of the Christ’s success, Hollywood has finally realized that they’re money in the spiritual beliefs market, and although the thought makes me cringe, the business side of me says that shareholders of media conglomerates should be demanding that their studios tap this market effectively. And if they do it right, this could be a rare case where business and Christian interests are well served.

Last Christmas, Narnia beat out Harry Potter 4 in the domestic box office—-a mind-blowing feat considering the power of the Harry Potter brand, the superior reviews of the Harry Potter film, and fact that Narnia was a new franchise launch.

Disney accomplished this in large part by approaching churches and other Christian communities and providing them with resources to help the churches use the Narnia movie as an evangelism tool. Disney advertised and sought out feature stories on religious magazines and websites, while screening the movie for pastors so the pastors, in turn, could recommend it to their congregants. The Narnia movie had marketing material on tables in many churches, and was even profiled in bulletin inserts.

On the horizon we have The Nativity Story and the big-budget summer comedy Evan Almighty. Nativity Story is easy for New Line’s marketing department—it’s pretty much just The Passion, Part 2: The Prequel.

Evan, however, faces a much more complex challenge. The biggest task in this retelling of Noah, however, isn’t Steve Carell’s challenge to build a modern-day ark, but director Tom Shadyac’s challenge to convince church-goers that he is a Christian making truly Christian movies within the Hollywood system. The big question is, will Universal Studio’s marketing team understand the nuances of the Christian market enough to realize that they can’t just knock on church doors like Disney did with Narnia. For them to maximize the Christian audience potential, they need to convince Christians that movies that don’t overtly portray the Gospel can be very helpful to Christian.

The biggest hurdle to tapping the Christian market is the uncritical Christian market itself. Many Christians, like myself, love going to movies and gravitate towards movies that affirm my worldview. But there are many more Christians who have given up on Hollywood, and won’t go to a movie unless they can be assured that it’s “biblical”.

Word of mouth in Christian circles is a funny thing. I can safely recommend The Passion or Narnia to friends while at church (though I have to assure many fellow congregants that the movie is, in fact, respectful to the Gospel). It’s a lot more awkward, however, recommending movies like 40-yr-old Virgin, Hellboy, 25th Hour, or even Bruce Almighty. This isn’t because these movies don’t exhibit Christian ideas; they very much do—some in more flawed presentation than others, but generally, the main moral lies well within the traditional realm of Christian virtues. Rather I can’t recommend these movies to Christians largely because of most Christians’ inability to take depictions of moral wrong-doing in its proper context.

That said, things are changing in churches. Pastors went to screenings of The Passion and Narnia and used their pulpits to tell their parishioners about the films. But if Hollywood wants to take the Christian market to the next logical step studio’s marketing departments must hold these pastors’ hands and equip them with the ability to train their parishioners that a swear word in a movie does not immediately negate its ability to uphold Christian virtues. This shouldn’t be too hard for Christians to understand. As Mel Gibson reminded us, some of the most recognizable biblical stories are pretty brutal…heck, have you read David and Bathsheba recently?

Even so, pastors are, sadly, ill-equipped to do it themselves...despite the growing number of resources, most pastors simply don’t know how to evaluate movies and judge them based on themes rather than number of swear words or gun shots.

Studios can help with this, but first they need to realize they’re already making many Christian-friendly movies. The challenge is, How does a studio market movies to Christians? Many Christians have largely given up on Hollywood, and the rest who are generally younger and aren’t sure how a non-Christian like M. Night Shyamalan can create movies with such wonderfully Christian-friendly themes.

All this leads me to my big “What If?” What if Warner Brothers had significant church marketing campaign for Superman Returns? Could that have been enough to lessen the media’s view that the film had grossly underperformed? Would this have mattered when Pirates of the Caribbean opened days later?

I think it may have. What both The Passion and Narnia show is that Christians can give a movie legs...something WB so desperately wanted as its domestic total inched towards $200M. In addition to expanding its opening weekend numbers, a church campaign could have brought in an older audience who suspected the new Superman was simply WB’s attempt to re-packaging a beloved childhood hero to a younger generation.

Had pastors across the country been assuring middle-aged men that WB wasn’t bastardizing their hero, but using him to tell a noble Christian-friendly theme, I think it could have made a difference in the way the movie played out in the middle of its run. Given the savior/resurrection theme and Superman’s lack of gratuitous violence, sex, or profanity, WB could have certainly capitalized on the untapped Christian market.

There are Christians in Hollywood who have a philosophy and business model that, given the right support from studios, could help marketing departments educate and then profit on the Christian market while preventing churches from simply becoming a tool of Hollywood studios. Filmmakers like Shadyac, Phil Anschutz (Walden Media), Scott Derrickson (Exorcism of Emily Rose), and VeggieTales creator, Phil Vischer all could do wonders to studio coffers if only executives would listen to them and not just exploit their wares.

My guess is that very few people in Hollywood marketing departments are picking up on the nuances of the Christian market. And sadly, studios will probably attempt to market a couple big movies, like Evan Almighty, to churches just like Disney did with Narnia. And when it fails, instead of taking the time to figure out how it could have gone better had they understood their audience, they’ll toss the idea of church marketing aside like it was a 40-year-old, formally hot actress. They’ll simply walk away thinking, “I guess that whole untapped Christian market was a myth.”

I, however, am convinced that with the right business model, movies that have marketing campaigns that span secular and religious venues, like Narnia’s, but also help Christians understand movies more holistically, will find an audience. And consequently, studios may find themselves with a business model as successful as the summer blockbuster model we’ve endured with for 30 years now.

And what’s in it for the Body of Christ? Well, besides our improved ability to evaluate the popular culture that surrounds us, intimate engagement with studio marketing departments would open the door for Christians to help shape culture for the better.