Hat tip to friend Lenore for the heads up on the NY Times article chronicling the latest in Hollywood’s attempts to cash in on the Christian film-going audience, reporting that 20th Century Fox has unveiled a new division, FoxFaith, that will release up to a dozen religious-oriented films each year: “Many of the films, with budgets ranging from about $3 million to $20 million each, will be released straight to DVD. But the studio said that at least six a year would be released nationally in theaters by an independent distributor working with Fox, starting on Oct. 6 with Love’s Abiding Joy, a western based on the novel by the Christian writer Janette Oke about a couple facing the trials of life on the American frontier.” The article also reports that the new division is the “biggest concerted effort by a major Hollywood studio to seek out films that will feed what many see as a growing, and underserved, Christian audience.”The article discusses a bit the “crude production values and amateurish acting” characterizing a lot of Christian filmmaking, suggesting that infusion of funds from the likes of FoxFaith will increase production quality. I wonder if it will increase the story-telling quality as well (a question this blog has touched on before).
The article also gives us more info on Esther-epic One Night with the King (a film this blog’s been following): the film will be released on Oct. 13 “in about 900 theaters, with Fox booking a few dozen of them. Fox will also distribute the DVD of the film, which does not have an overtly Christian point of view, around Easter and the Jewish holiday of Purim, which commemorates the ancient tale.”
(Image: FoxFaith)