{"id":6433,"date":"2008-02-12T05:22:27","date_gmt":"2008-02-12T13:22:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/?p=6433"},"modified":"2016-04-08T10:38:48","modified_gmt":"2016-04-08T17:38:48","slug":"interview-cindy-bond-the-ten-commandments-2007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2008\/02\/interview-cindy-bond-the-ten-commandments-2007.html","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Cindy Bond (The Ten Commandments<\/i>, 2007)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>As chief operating officer of Promenade Pictures<\/a>, Cindy Bond had high hopes for The Ten Commandments<\/a><\/i>, the first in a projected 12-part series of computer-animated \u2018Epic Stories of the Bible<\/a>,\u2019 when it opened in theatres last October. But the film failed to make much of a splash, opening well out of the Top 20 and grossing less than a million dollars \u2014 on a project that cost $11.6 million to make.<\/p>\n

The movie came out on DVD last week, and Bond spoke to CT Movies about what went wrong \u2014 and how things might be different with their next film, a comedy about Noah\u2019s Ark due sometime around Easter 2009.<\/p>\n

The Ten Commandments<\/i> didn\u2019t do very well at the box office<\/a> last year. Is it fair to say the film bombed?<\/b><\/p>\n

Bond: I don\u2019t think that\u2019s the case at all. You know what \u201cbomb\u201d has to do with? It has to do with how much it costs to produce the movie, and then how much they make at the box office and then the DVD. I mean, comparing our budget to what we made at the box office and what we\u2019re going to make on DVD, this movie will be in profit. Very few movies can boast that, in Hollywood. There was a movie starring Brad Pitt [The Assassination of Jesse James<\/i>] that opened around the same time we did, that was made for a budget in the $30 million range, and they only made I think north of $3 million.<\/p>\n

Also, we didn\u2019t have an enormous amount of money in our marketing campaign, and we didn\u2019t have a lot of time. We only had about three months to market the movie, and our big focus was the grassroots side of the campaign, through the churches, and it takes a long time. [When CT Movies interviewed Bond and Promenade CEO Frank Yablans last October<\/a>, Yablans said the company had been \u201cdeveloping our material for 4\u00bd years\u201d and had a $120 million \u201cwar chest\u201d for its projects. \u2014 Ed.<\/i>]<\/p>\n

The good side is the people who did see the movie really liked it. We have a good solid B on Box Office Mojo from people who saw the movie and really liked it. We made the movie for moms, pops and kids, for families. We started off making The Ten Commandments<\/i> originally as a direct-to-video movie, and about half-way in we said, \u201cIt looks so great, let\u2019s work to go theatrical,\u201d and so that\u2019s what happened. And considering we were going to make a direct-to-DVD movie and ended up with what we did, I think we did a great job!<\/p>\n

So was the theatrical release sort of like a commercial for the DVD?<\/b><\/p>\n

Bond: Exactly, one hundred percent. If we hadn\u2019t gone theatrical, we\u2019d be starting from scratch with our DVD marketing, but it was absolutely one hundred percent a big commercial for the DVD release.<\/p>\n

Did it do better than you expected? Worse?<\/b><\/p>\n

Bond: No, it definitely did worse than I expected. I thought it would do better. But then, you know, looking at the marketing campaign having only three months, it\u2019s just\u2013 I know hindsight is always 20\/20, but we absolutely did not have enough time. There were various individuals on our marketing team that were very concerned from the beginning, but there was a release schedule and we went with it. In hindsight, we would have held out and gone theatrical now.<\/p>\n

I think people were talking about The Passion<\/i> at least a year before it came out. That movie really had time to drum up the interest.<\/b><\/p>\n

Bond: Yeah. And Bella<\/i> is another good example; they were out there at least nine months to a year, and it was a very good movie. Ten Commandments<\/i> was a very good movie. We just tried to pull off the impossible, we tried to pull it together in three months, and it just wasn\u2019t enough time.<\/p>\n

Ten Commandments<\/i> is a really good movie that we\u2019re very proud of. I know the movie\u2019s anointed. I\u2019ve gotten so many letters of support, letters that have said they feel the movie is very anointed.<\/p>\n

There was also some controversy<\/a> before the film came out, over the advertising.<\/b><\/p>\n

Bond: Yeah, and I\u2019m wondering if it worked against us. We had bought airtime on Disney Radio for a spot that we had created, to run on their network; that\u2019s our core audience, is kids, probably five to 12 years old. So we bought the time and gave them our spot \u2014 which by the way had already been accepted by Ryan Seacrest and Dr. Laura and numerous other radio shows \u2014 and only Radio Disney came back and said, \u201cWe\u2019ll play your spot but you have to take out the words \u2018chosen by God.'\u201d Well, the grapevine is an interesting thing, because some pastor friends and industry friends had heard a rumor that Disney made Promenade take God out of the movie<\/i>! And I\u2019m thinking, \u2018Where did that<\/i> come from?\u2019 But it couldn\u2019t be farther from the truth. We felt it was better to take out the words \u201cchosen by God\u201d [from the ad] and to advertise in front of the kids and get them in the theatre so they can hear about God, rather than just pull it and not give them any awareness. So that was the controversy.<\/p>\n

The Ten Commandments<\/i> was created as part of a projected series of 12 films. Is that still the case?<\/b><\/p>\n

Bond: Oh yes, absolutely the case. We arranged financing for all 12 in the beginning, and like I said, we anticipated the first one would go direct-to-DVD. The second in the series has been theatrical from day one, as will the other pictures, and the second picture, The Flood<\/i>, is just absolutely fantastic. And the animation has improved actually a huge amount. We did the best we could on the first one, and we knew it would be a learning curve, and it\u2019s just very exciting to see what all the animators are doing. I just got back from New Zealand, so I\u2019m pretty pumped up.<\/p>\n

You just said The Flood<\/i>. The title I\u2019ve heard is Noah\u2019s Ark: The New Beginning<\/i>.<\/b><\/p>\n

Bond: Well, right now we\u2019re all in a working-title phase. So right now we\u2019re talking about The Flood<\/i>, over Noah\u2019s Ark: The New Beginning<\/i>. But it\u2019s the story of Noah.<\/p>\n

But definitely with a twist: We\u2019ve got talking animals, and one of the little animals gets in trouble and doesn\u2019t look like he\u2019s going to make the cruise, and the other ones have to go out and find him. There\u2019s a lot of humor, and the cast is unbelievable. We\u2019ve got Michael Keaton and Marcia Gay Harden, who won an Oscar for Pollock<\/i>, and we\u2019ve got Sir Ben Kingsley, and we\u2019ve got Rob Schneider who is just hysterical \u2014 he plays a prairie dog \u2014 and we have talking animals and a lot more humour.<\/p>\n

The Ten Commandments<\/i>, inherently, is a tough story, it\u2019s not a comedy. We injected levity into the movie as much as we could, but we wanted to stick close to scripture, which we did. We told the whole story in 88 minutes, so it would hold kids\u2019 attention from beginning to end. A lot of moms have said, \u201cThank God you made this movie because we tried to get our kids to sit through the DeMille version but it\u2019s three and a half hours, the kids won\u2019t do it!\u201d<\/p>\n

But when we came to The Flood<\/i>, the running time is about the same, we made it more kid friendly, meaning there\u2019s much more humor, talking animals, the animation level is better. All the way around, the movie is just a lot more commercial.<\/p>\n

How is The Flood<\/i> compared to The Ten Commandments<\/i> in terms of budget?<\/b><\/p>\n

Bond: It\u2019s twice the budget.<\/p>\n

Is Ben Kingsley back as the narrator, and Elliott Gould as God?<\/b><\/p>\n

Bond: Yeah, that\u2019s right.<\/p>\n

Is that going to be consistent across all 12 films?<\/b><\/p>\n

Bond: I certainly would love it to be. It depends on their availability. But I think I\u2019ve got a real good shot, with that being the case. Sir Ben is just phenomenal to work with, he\u2019s such a pro. He just brings so much to the process, to the movie; his voice just takes you to another place, his voice just has so much depth and he\u2019s so profound. And Elliott, the reason we went with Elliott was because, as opposed to the stereotypical wrathful angry God that everybody wants to portray as the Old Testament God, we wanted to portray a loving God that is infinitely patient with us, but that, when we continually mess up, there are consequences when we cross boundary lines. [For more on the Noah\u2019s Ark cartoon, click here<\/a>.<\/i>]<\/p>\n

You mentioned financing. Have you got that money in hand already?<\/b><\/p>\n

Bond: The money\u2019s not banked, it\u2019s just that we have very, very wealthy investors. A lot of them, particularly in Singapore, are the ones who came to us and said, \u201cWe\u2019ll fund all your movies.\u201d At the time we were only doing six, and they said, \u201cWell, we\u2019ll commit to funding them if you\u2019ll do 12.\u201d The whole group of people are Christians who believe in the power of media to influence hearts and minds, and really positively impact culture for the kingdom of God, and they believe wholeheartedly in \u2018Epic Stories of the Bible\u2019 as a way to influence kids.<\/p>\n

The Ten Commandments<\/i> was the first animated film I produced, the first for the whole group of us who did it [at Promenade]. We\u2019re all of the same heart and mind, we all love the Lord, we all have the same objective in mind \u2014 to use these movies as a tool to get kids excited about the greatest stories ever told, starring the greatest superheroes who ever existed. That\u2019s been our common goal and objective.<\/p>\n

\u2014 A shorter version of this article was first published at Christianity Today Movies.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As chief operating officer of Promenade Pictures, Cindy Bond had high hopes for The Ten Commandments, the first in a projected 12-part series of computer-animated \u2018Epic Stories of the Bible,\u2019 when it opened in theatres last October. But the film failed to make much of a splash, opening well out of the Top 20 and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1650,109,3532],"tags":[898,899,836,848,893],"class_list":["post-6433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible-movies","category-christianitytoday","category-interviews","tag-cindy-bond","tag-frank-yablans","tag-noahs-ark-the-new-beginning","tag-promenade-pictures","tag-ten-commandments-2007"],"yoast_head":"\nInterview: Cindy Bond (The Ten Commandments, 2007)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As chief operating officer of Promenade Pictures, Cindy Bond had high hopes for The Ten Commandments, the first in a projected 12-part series of\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2008\/02\/interview-cindy-bond-the-ten-commandments-2007.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Interview: Cindy Bond (The Ten Commandments, 2007)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As chief operating officer of Promenade Pictures, Cindy Bond had high hopes for The Ten Commandments, the first in a projected 12-part series of\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2008\/02\/interview-cindy-bond-the-ten-commandments-2007.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"FilmChat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-02-12T13:22:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-04-08T17:38:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/files\/2013\/03\/tencommandments2007-cindybond-a.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Peter T. 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