Making big bucks on religious films

In The Washington Post, Robert W. Butler notes that more and more Hollywood films are dealing with religion lately, and he goes on to explore the causes of this trend:

The Book of EliBut why now?

“There are two schools of thought about that,” said Greg Wright, an editor at HollywoodJesus.com, which examines popular culture from a religious perspective.

“The more paranoid elements of our culture tend to think Hollywood has a proactive agenda, that producers have a grand scheme to use movies to shape the thinking of audiences. I don’t subscribe to that school.

“I believe that Hollywood gives audiences what audiences want to see. If people don’t want to see movies with certain messages, they won’t buy tickets.

“So if there’s a trend out there, it’s one reflecting what people are already thinking and feeling,” Wright said.

Continue reading at The Washington Post.

Nathan Schneider is a former editor at large for The Immanent Frame and an executive producer and senior editor for Frequencies. He is author of Thank You, Anarchy: Notes from the Occupy Apocalypse and God in Proof: The Story of a Search from the Ancients to the Internet, both published by University of California Press. His journalism has appeared in Harper'sThe NationThe Chronicle of Higher EducationThe New York TimesReligion Dispatches, and elsewhere. He is also an editor of the online publications Waging Nonviolence and Killing the Buddha, and his website is The Row Boat. Read all of Nathan Schneider's TIF interviews here.

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