DHD:

This subject matter is a decided departure for the filmmaker famous for directing The Passion of the Christ. But in a way the subject matter is in his wheelhouse: Maccabee is a close cousin to William Wallace, leader of the Scottish rebellion against the British in Braveheart, the film that brought Gibson two Oscars: for Best Picture and Best Director. Gibson last directed Apocalypto about the Mayan civilization and a tribesman who escapes human sacrifice and saves his family. While Gibson has experienced tremendous success as a producer and director, his recent star turn in front of the camera in The Beaver was a box office failure even though it received a rousing ovation at this past Cannes Film Festival.

This new deal also marks a major return to filmmaking for Joe Eszterhas, once Hollywood’s highest paid screenwriter for pics like Basic Instinct, Jagged Edge, and Flashdance. His credits also include two films that focused on Jewish themes: the 1987 Betrayed, which starred Debra Winger as an undercover FBI agent probing white supremacists, and 1989’s Music Box, which starred Jessica Lange whose Hungarian immigrant father is accused of engaging in atrocities during World War II. … 

In recent years, Eszterhas stepped away from Hollywood, moved to Cleveland, overcame cancer, and focused on writing books instead of films. Both he and Gibson have had their share of travails, and make an unexpected and intriguing pairing on an unexpected and intriguing subject.

Much more here.

Eszterhas and Gibson are poster boys for tortured artistic souls — which, for whatever reason, is often part of the perfect recipe for great art.

If nothing else, this should be interesting.

They adjusted their marketing plan.

This was before the Left Behind movies sold a few million DVD’s and The Passion of the Christ opened to over $100 million despite being set 2000 years ago in a dead language. Now every studio in Hollywood is looking for “faith-based” projects, especially because this year’s highest-grossing independent film was Fireproof, produced by a church for about $700,000 and which grossed over $30 million. Several studios even have faith-based divisions.

So has Hollywood found religion? Hardly. While it’s certainly a good thing that the studios are finally aware that Christians exist, they still don’t understand them, nor do they really want to try very hard. To be fair, Christians as a whole don’t exactly make things easy for Hollywood, as usually the only time that Hollywood hears from the Christian community is when they complain about or boycott their product. But that’s also been true of other people groups such as blacks, gays, and lobbyists for various nationalities or causes, and Hollywood has spent considerable effort to understand them while the media has done countless stories on the lack of accurately portrayed minorities.

But if there are faith-based divisions in Hollywood, what’s the problem? The problem is the divisions themselves; they are set up to acquire already financed or partially financed films from independent Christian producers and spend as little money as possible. They will occasionally bring in a Christian publicity firm to drum up some grass roots support, but the primary strategy is to release a film cheaply and hope the core Christian audience shows up. If they do, they make a killing; if they don’t, no harm done because so little was spent in the first place.

Once in a blue moon (full disclosure—I don’t know what that means), a studio will release a big budget film that’s story was generated from the Christian community, such as Chronicles of Narnia, or…um, I can’t really think of another one. Maybe The Nativity Story, but that was a half-hearted and boring attempt to capitalize on the Passion craze. But even in the case of Narnia, they chose a film that was safe and wouldn’t feel like a faith-based film to mainstream audiences, so as not to risk turning anyone off. When Sony Universal released Brokeback Mountain, they didn’t shy away from a few explicit gay sex scenes, as that would have been compromising; one wonders if they would extend the same treatment to explicit prayer or churchy scenes in a faith-based film that had a budget above $5 million.

So the faith-based film spectrum includes explicitly churchy cheap movies on one end, safe and moderate expensive movies (albeit very few) on the other. There is no in between. Movies like Chariots of Fire, The Mission, The Apostle, or A Walk to Remember, quality films of subtle power that address in an explicit and accurate way the issues of faith that most Americans experience, just aren’t made anymore. If these films were pitched to a studio today, they would either be shuffled to the faith division, dumbed down, and made for $2 million with no stars, or they would be beefed up and done expensively but have all the faith stuff thinned out. The Mission would be called The Journey, and it wouldn’t be about a missionary preaching to a third world tribe, it would be about an environmentalist preaching to a wrong-intentioned missionary.

The result? The majority of Americans miss out on films that reflect a large segment of the populace and an important part of our life experience. 90% of Americans believe in God, but how often do we see Him discussed in a mainstream film? Over half the country goes to church on a regular basis, but how often do we see church or clergy in a mainstream film? Or any Christians at all for that matter? Most Americans pray; have you seen prayer on screen in awhile?

There’s no question that Christians need to do a better job of making films and becoming world-class filmmakers who will deserve the ear of Hollywood executives. But even when we do, we often face the fate of famous screenwriter Joe Eszterhas, who recently became a Christian and is desperate to make a faith-based film. He pitched a script that executives thought was brilliant, but they didn’t want to make a “Christian film” unless it was cheap. The quality of the film matters less than which category they can fit it in to. In a vacuum, this isn’t abnormal or bad, as all entertainment is usually about marketing and finding categories. The problem in this case is that neither category is a good one.