Is the Fox Faith label the kiss of death?

Is the Fox Faith label the kiss of death? August 25, 2007

Terry Mattingly’s latest column for the Scripps Howard News Service looks at what happened to The Ultimate Gift, which came to theatres back in March and is now out on DVD:

There were other reviews, good and bad. Still, the nastiness in strategic corners of the media caught veteran producer Rick Eldridge off guard, in large part because he thought that he was producing a mainstream movie, with mainstream talent, that was going to have a chance to reach a thoroughly mainstream audience.

What he didn’t count on was getting stuck with two dangerous labels — “Fox” and “Faith.” Those words can turn your average media insider into a pillar of salt.

That’s what happened to “The Ultimate Gift,” turning this quiet cinematic fable into a cautionary tale for others who want to make movies that can appeal to viewers in Middle America, including folks who frequent sanctuary pews.

“I really felt this story had strong values that would hit home with the general market,” said Eldridge, who is now pushing to promote the DVD of his movie. “I thought this was a moral-message film, but I was determined to make a movie that would speak to a wide spectrum of people. … Then we got pigeon-holed into this little ‘Christian’ niche that really limited who would get much of a chance to see this movie.”

The pivotal moment was when this 20th Century Fox project was moved to the new Fox Faith division, which meant “The Ultimate Gift” was sent to theaters with all kinds of faith-based strings attached. As the Fox Faith Web site bluntly stated: “To be part of Fox Faith, a movie has to have overt Christian content or be derived from the work of a Christian author.”

Thus, mainstream critics were determined to find the moral messages and make sure potential moviegoers were warned in advance. This also meant that mainstream performers such as Academy Award nominee James Garner, veteran character actor Brian Dennehy and the young actress Abigail Breslin of “Little Miss Sunshine” discovered that they were — surprise, surprise — starring in a “Christian movie.” . . .

There is no need to deny that the movie contains religious and moral themes, said Eldridge. But for generations, Hollywood executives made successful mainstream movies that contained these kinds of words and images. These movies were aimed at a broad, mainstream market, not a narrow, political, sectarian, “Christian” niche.

“I told the Fox people this movie was going to resonate with the Christian audience and that’s fine with me, because I am a Christian,” said Eldridge. “But I was worried that this movie would get tagged as a little ‘Christian’ movie, like that was some kind of Good Housekeeping seal for the Christian marketplace. …

“I think it’s obvious that this is what happened and that caused some people to distance themselves from this movie. There was no need for that to happen.”

For what it’s worth, Fox Faith Movies has not released any new movies theatrically since The Ultimate Gift. The website still lists two movies as “coming soon”, but one of them recently went straight to TV, while the other one was originally scheduled for an Easter release and has since been put on indefinite hold.

In fairness, it is not only Fox Faith that has had to deal with the problem of turning away audiences simply because they target the Christian niche. Recent box-office disappointments such as New Line’s The Nativity Story (2006) and Universal’s Evan Almighty also quite possibly turned away as many people as they might have attracted, precisely because it was perceived that those films were catering to the churchgoing crowd. More and more, it makes sense that the makers of The Chronicles of Narnia (2005) made a point of downplaying their own film’s Christian connections.

AUG 26 UPDATE: Mattingly’s column is now archived here, too.


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