In a recent speech Pullman, author of
The Golden Compass, declared:
“We're used to the Kingdom of Heaven, but you can tell from the general
thrust of the book that I'm of the devil's party, like Milton. And I think
it's time we thought about a republic of Heaven instead of the Kingdom of
Heaven. The King is dead. That's to say I believe the King is dead. I'm an
atheist.”
But will religious controversy necessarily be bad for
business? Not if the Da Vinci Code is anything to go by. After all, Dan
Brown’s best-selling anti-Catholic book The Da Vinci Code is an
international publishing and movie juggernaut.
Within three years of publication Brown’s novel was a worldwide bestseller
that has been translated into 44 languages with more than 60.5 million
copies in print! In 2006, in its opening weekend, the movie version earned
over $224 million worldwide, second only to the opening of 2005's Star
Wars flick, Revenge of the Sith. This is in spite of several Catholic
bishops calling for a boycott of the film and protesters at several movie
theatres across the States on opening weekend. Protesters may also have
turned up as far a field as Athens, Greece and the movie may have banned in
Manila and slammed with an R18 rating in the Philippines, but nothing
could prevent The Da Vinci Code from becoming that year’s second highest
grossing hit movie worldwide: by end-2006 it had grossed a whopping $756
270 019!
On the surface it would seem that that religious controversy doesn’t seem
to hurt ticket sales at all, especially when one also considers the huge
success of the Harry Potter movies. On the other hand, in recent years
Hollywood has discovered the market once again for movies aimed at
traditionally Christian audiences following The Passion of the Christ.
Mel Gibson’s movie was a huge box office success. Made for a mere $30
million using some of Gibson’s own money, it went on to score $370 million
in the U.S. alone. Marketing the Narnia movie to Christian
audiences in addition to the usual science fiction and fantasy crowd also
paid off well —
it made an impressive $291 million at the U.S. box office
alone.
Alienating this potential audience might actually hurt potential profits.
New Line is most likely hoping for those same audiences that made Narnia
such a box office hit. Except Disney lured those audiences into cinemas by
trumpeting the fact that Narnia author C.S. Lewis was a devoted Christian
and Pullman isn’t exactly Lewis. (Pullman has in actual fact recently
criticized Lewis and his work as being “blatantly racist” and
“monumentally disparaging of women.”)
Will New Line’s $150 million gamble pay off? Only time will tell, but one
thing is certain though: you wouldn’t want to be working for New Line’s PR
and marketing division right now . . .
