The entertainment business has become all about hitting the niches and hitting them hard — targeting works for specific, passionate audiences.
Or, in this case of 20th Century Fox’s new venture, a Passionate audience.
After Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” demonstrated that a subtitled, bloody Gospel tale could drum up $612 million in worldwide box office, Hollywood’s studios have been trying to tap further into the Christian market.
Disney marketed “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” to churches a la “The Passion” and reaped a $292 million domestic gross and $745 million total worldwide.
Christian content
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.”
Yes, the conservative-wary have noted, this is the same Fox whose Fox News Channel is the Bush administration’s best media friend.
Yes, movie fans might note, this is the same Fox whose specialty-film division, Fox Searchlight, brought us the excellent “Sideways” and “Little Miss Sunshine” and is soon to unleash Richard Linklater’s food-industry-scorching “Fast Food Nation.”
Fox also is about to launch Fox Atomic, a division focusing on teen-oriented films.
Can Fox Barrio, Soul Fox and Fox Oy! be far behind?
Fox Faith actually 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 home entertainment division, said the goal is “being able to serve an underserved market, serving a market hungry for product the best way you can, both theatrically and through home entertainment.”
He said six to 12 of these 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 (which dominates the Chicago area). The first release, the Christian family western drama “Love’s Abiding Joy,” is set to open Oct. 6 at several Chicago-area theaters, including downtown’s River East 21, Schaumburg’s Streets of Woodfield 20 and Warrenville’s Cantera 30.
Count the conservative Christian organization American Family Association among those pleased by the plan.
`Values and morals’
“I have seen several of the home releases that Fox Faith has put out, and I’m very encouraged by them,” said Rebecca Grace, entertainment staff writer for American Family Association Journal. “It’s a huge step for Christian entertainment, and from what I can tell, 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 there are others who think that creating niches has a way of erecting walls rather than opening doors. John Thompson, a musician and pastor of Aurora’s Warehouse Church, said he worries that such a strategy could “ghettoize” Christian-themed movies as they have Christian music.
“Do we need more specifically Christian things to separate us?” he asked. “`The Robe,’ `The Mission’ — there are a lot of great [Christian-themed] films that people outside of the Christian community enjoy because of their artistic value.”
One little-discussed facet of the Fox Faith plan is that it’s close to the front lines of the digital revolution. Most, if not all, of these movies will be projected digitally.
“This enables a company like Fox Faith to go out on a relatively wide release without having to buy prints, and we’ll be able to buy their content,” said Tony Rhead, Carmike’s senior vice president for entertainment and digital cinema.
Carmike, in the meantime, expects to have converted 2,200 of its 2,400 screens to digital by October 2007.
Fox Faith may be leading the flock after all.
———-
mcaro@tribune.com
Read Pop Machine, Mark Caro’s blog about popular culture, at www.chicagotribune.com/popmachine.
