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Top indie 'Fireproof' warms Christian market
Jan. 21, 2009 – Uplifting martial relationship drama Fireproof beat long odds to be last year’s top grossing indie film with $33 million in domestic box office via Samuel Goldwyn Distribution, which was collected via marketing at the Christian audience. At its widest distribution, the film played at 905 theaters, according to Boxofficemojo.com, which is about one-third of circulation of a major-studio release.
Produced for only $500,000, the film was made by a Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, GA with mostly unknowns, although it stars Kirk Cameron. He is a Christian-market celebrity and professional actor best known for TV series Growing Pains.
A Wall Street Journal article recounts the journey of Fireproof - whose name plays off both a firefighter character and the idea of fireproofing a marriage in turmoil. The Christian market is much talked about but has few hits. Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ was a sensation in 2004 grossing $370 million domestically and Facing the Giants, a football drama produced for $100,000 that grossed $10 million in 2006.
However, many more uplifting films with strong spiritual dimensions have stumbled. Even Disney decided to pull out of co-financing a third big-budget Narnia film with pro-religious themes from Walden Media, despite good results from the first two installments of the family-film fantasy franchise.
The WSJ article by Dale Buss says that there appears to be a “Christian fatigue” in the faithful niche after mainstream studio films attempted to recruit them for questionable movies, perhaps most ridiculously by The Di Vinci Code. That drama actually undermines basic church teachings but tried to convert Christians by inviting them to “join the dialog” in marketing-driven blogs.
The WSJ article quotes a major studio executive explaining the success of Fireproof: “It is authentic because it is coming from the community; it’s not just geared to the community," said Robert Rubin, executive vice president of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, which plans to release Fireproof on DVD late this month.
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online.wsj.com/article/SB123249904737100583.html