The entertainment business has become all about hitting the niches and hitting them hard ? targeting works for specific, passionate audiences. Or, in the case of 20 th Century Fox?
s new venture, a Passion-ate audience. After Mel Gibson?s The Passion of the Christ demonstrated that a subtitled religious epic could drum up $612 million in worldwide box office, Hollywood studios have been trying to tap the Christian market.
Disney marketed The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to churches and reaped a $292 million domestic gross. Now, Fox has announced the creation of an entire film division devoted to Christian content: Fox Faith. Yes, wags have noted, this is the same Fox whose TV division has brought us The Simple Life, Temptation Island and When Animals Attack.
Fox Faith is spun off from the company?s home-entertainment division, which distributed the Passion DVD and already had been marketing direct-to-video releases to a growing network of Christian congregations and households. The Fox Faith movies are low-budget productions that have been independently made and acquired.
That is, Fox isn?t actually making the films and isn?t even handling the theatrical distribution, which is being farmed out to an outside company.
What Fox is doing is giving a seal of approval to these indie religious movies and getting them into the mainstream. Steve Feldstein, senior vice president for Fox?s homeentertainment division, said the goal is "being able to serve an underserved market.
" He said six to 12 of the movies will be shown over the next year through an arrangement with Carmike Cinemas (which operates primarily in small markets, many in the South) and AMC Theatres. The first release will be the family Western drama Love?s Abiding Joy.
Count the conservative American Family Association among those pleased by the plan. "It?s a huge step for Christian entertainment," said Rebecca Grace, entertainment staff writer for American Family Association Journal.
"They really seem to be headed in the right direction and really seem to be honoring the values and morals of Christianity at this point." But others think that creating niches has a way of erecting walls rather than opening doors. John Thompson, pastor of Warehouse Church in Aurora, Ill.
, said he worries that such a strategy could "ghettoize" Christian-themed movies as they have Christian music.
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