LOS ANGELES \u2014 At the movies this fall, Josh O\u2019Connor plays a hot priest with a complicated past, Keanu Reeves is an angel who lost his wings and Elizabeth Olsen has a romantic dilemma in the afterlife.<\/p>\n
Hollywood, it seems, has found God.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s not just starry big-budget Netflix films or A24 indies that are grappling with religion and its place in entertainment. In recent years, there\u2019s been an explosion of films and television made from a confessional perspective that evangelize or portray a particular faith, often Christianity, that have performed particularly well with audiences.<\/p>\n
There are animated biblical films from Angel, like the upcoming musical \u201cDavid,\u201d which the company said has already exceeded $14 million in theatrical pre-sale tickets ahead of its release this Friday, to docudramas like Martin Scorsese\u2019s \u201cThe Saints.\u201d While episodes from Season 2 are still being released, the first season of the Fox Nation series, which premiered last year, was the most watched on the platform.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere has been a revival, a revolution of sorts, of spirituality and faith content,\u201d proclaimed Traci Blackwell, head of targeted content for Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, at a recent Variety event in Beverly Hills for faith and spirituality in entertainment. Earlier this year, Amazon premiered the first season of its own biblical drama, \u201cHouse of David,\u201d and gained exclusive US streaming rights to \u201cThe Chosen,\u201d a massively popular drama series about the life of Jesus.<\/p>\n
Historically some faith-based entertainment has performed well at the box office \u2014 Mel Gibson\u2019s 2004 epic \u201cThe Passion of the Christ\u201d was notoriously the highest-grossing R-rated film in the US and Canada for two decades. But faith-based hits have been few and far between for most of this century.<\/p>\n
\u201cHollywood has taken a lot of criticism by those in the faith community for not providing films that speak to them, that reflect their values,\u201d said Paul Dergarabedian, Comscore\u2019s senior media analyst, emphasizing the box-office potential of faith-based films.<\/p>\n
Studios are realizing faith-based film and television is a worthwhile investment at least in part due to the success of \u201cThe Chosen,\u201d which Angel helped launch in 2017, even if it initially took time to see those results.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was like pulling teeth to get people to watch it,\u201d recalled Angel CEO and co-founder Neal Harmon. \u201cPeople have this idea that faith means cheesy or preachy. And we had to break through that barrier.\u201d<\/p>\n
Once they did, it paid off. Since Fathom Entertainment began distributing \u201cThe Chosen\u201d theatrically in 2023, the series has grossed more than $116 million domestically.<\/p>\n
Though not a Christian company, Angel aims to distribute and market \u201cvalues-based entertainment\u201d that includes but is not limited to stories of faith. They\u2019ve released a host of religious films, with \u201cZero A.D.,\u201d a biblical epic about the Massacre of the Innocents recounted in the Gospel of Matthew, on the docket for 2026.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Lionsgate is set to premiere \u201cI Can Only Imagine 2\u201d in theaters February, a sequel to the 2018 biopic starring Dennis Quaid, which was one of the highest-grossing Christian films of all-time in the United States.<\/p>\n
Co-director Andrew Erwin said he noticed a \u201cmassive shift\u201d take place about five years ago, after years of disconnect between the demand for these kinds of films and Hollywood\u2019s willingness to make them.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the first time, movie studios are really giving us a fair shake,\u201d he said, though he thinks the quality of the content was also a factor. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have the knowledge of how to do the filmmaking side of things. And so, I think the storytelling has gotten a lot better.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lionsgate is also set to distribute the first of Gibson\u2019s two-part sequel to \u201cThe Passion of the Christ\u201d in 2027.<\/p>\n
Trying to define what counts as faith-based programming is a bit like trying to define what counts as pornography.<\/p>\n
Themes of belief, guilt and \u201cfoolish grace\u201d abound in O\u2019Connor\u2019s \u201cWake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery\u201d \u2014 the third of filmmaker Rian Johnson\u2019s hit Netflix franchise. But few would call it a religious film.<\/p>\n
Amanda Seyfried preaches celibacy and endures persecution in \u201cThe Testament of Ann Lee,\u201d the musical biopic about the founder of the Shakers sect, in theaters Christmas. But in all the acclaim and Oscar buzz surrounding the film, there\u2019s little talk of its engagement with faith.<\/p>\n
Even Scorsese\u2019s 1988 \u201cThe Last Temptation of Christ\u201d or filmmaker Paul Schrader\u2019s Oscar-nominated \u201cFirst Reformed,\u201d which also stars Seyfried, are hardly thought of broadly as Christian films, despite the fact that both men have been outspoken about their respective traditions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis film was his way of exploring his faith and exploring who his God is,\u201d Scorsese\u2019s daughter Francesca, who directed one of the episodes of \u201cThe Saints,\u201d said of \u201cThe Last Temptation of Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n
Conversely, the people behind some of these recent projects resist them being called explicitly religious, even when audiences perceive them as such.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t characterize it so much as overtly Christian,\u201d Jonathan Roumie, who plays Jesus in \u201cThe Chosen,\u201d told The Associated Press last year. \u201cIt\u2019s a historical drama that centers on Jesus.\u201d<\/p>\n
For studios and filmmakers, acknowledging that a project is told from a religious perspective can be a double-edged sword.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re buying in on going to the movie theater for a faith-based movie, you know you\u2019re gonna have people around you who are really into the experience,\u201d Dergarabedian said. \u201cThe minute you say faith-based though, it kind of puts a movie in a box.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES \u2014 At the movies this fall, Josh O\u2019Connor plays a hot priest with a complicated past,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":462235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,210798,8571,210797,11412,210799,210796,66300,2961,224,5337,83248,365,210794,210793,210795],"class_list":{"0":"post-462234","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-christian-film-industry","11":"tag-christianity","12":"tag-cinema-of-the-united-states","13":"tag-faith","14":"tag-house-of-david-tv-series","15":"tag-i-can-only-imagine-film","16":"tag-jesus","17":"tag-la","18":"tag-los-angeles","19":"tag-losangeles","20":"tag-martin-scorsese","21":"tag-religion","22":"tag-the-chosen-tv-series","23":"tag-the-last-temptation-of-christ-film","24":"tag-the-passion-of-the-christ"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115757729977836209","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}