Posted on 06/28/2005 11:19:26 AM PDT by JDBrown90
In a marriage of modern mythmakers, the Walt Disney Co. is marketing a film based on C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia. And in doing so, Disney will take a page from Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. Walt Disney Pictures/Walden Media Disney's adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia follows the exploits of four children in World War II England who enter the imaginary world of Narnia through a magical wardrobe.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, based on Lewis' novel for children and Christian allegory, will be released Dec. 9.
For Disney, the Christian marketing campaign represents a sharp break with corporate policy. Apart from Disney World's annual Nights of Joy concerts, the film is the company's first undertaking with the religious community. For some evangelical leaders, it represents the effective end of their Disney boycott.
The entertainment giant, which bills itself as a "Magic Kingdom," has carefully avoided religion for most of its history. Yet Disney has launched a 10-month campaign aimed at evangelical Christians to build support for Narnia, a $100 million, live-action and computer-generated animated feature it is co-producing with Walden Media.
Disney has hired several Christian marketing groups to handle the film, including Motive Marketing, which ran the historic, grass-roots efforts for The Passion. That film has grossed $611 million worldwide and is now in re-release. "From a marketing point of view, it could be a marriage made in heaven � if the movie is any good," says Adele Reinhartz, professor of religion at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada.
Dr. Armand Nicholi, who for decades has taught a Harvard seminar on C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud, agrees. The entertainment world realizes there's a big audience "that embraces a spiritual world view," he says. How well these groups interact "will determine how successful this marriage is."
Paul Lauer, founder of Motive Marketing, declined to comment on his campaign for Narnia, apart from confirming that his firm is handling it.
"Disney, as the consummate corporate animal, is looking at Paul as the guy who delivered the audience of The Passion," says Barbara Nicolosi, of Act One, a program designed to bring Christian writers and executives into the entertainment industry.
Another Christian firm, Grace Hill Media, also has been hired, and several groups have joined the marketing effort. For instance, the Christian Web site hollywoodjesus.com launched a special feature on its site recently devoted to The Chronicles of Narnia.
For its part, Disney is trying to play down the Christian marketing approach, noting that it will reach out to the science-fiction and fantasy communities, as well.
"We don't want to cater to one fan base over the other, or at the expense of another," says Dennis Rice, Disney's senior vice president for public relations.
Failed boycott Leaders of the religious boycott, launched with great fanfare in the 1990s, accused Disney of betraying its family-values legacy by providing health benefits to same-sex partners, allowing Gay Days at theme parks and producing controversial movies, books and TV programming through Disney subsidiaries.
Financial analysts said the boycott had no effect on Disney's bottom line. The Disney-Narnia campaign appears to acknowledge implicitly that the Disney boycott has been a failure.
One of the groups that led the boycott, Colorado-based Focus on the Family, has been included in the early stages of the marketing campaign.
The 16.3 million-member Southern Baptist Convention officially ended its eight-year Disney boycott this week at the denomination's annual meeting.
Bob Waliszewski, the head of teen ministries for Focus, attended a Disney presentation for Narnia at the Burbank studio.
"We have still told families there are disappointing elements at Disney," he says. "We haven't changed that disappointment in Disney. But with Eisner leaving, we're all hoping that Disney will be a better company."
Disney chief executive officer Michael Eisner plans to retire Sept. 30.
For its part, Disney is circumspect about the boycott's apparent end.
"I don't think that this movie is being done as a response to earlier criticism of the company," says Rice. "We think it's a terrific property that's going to make a terrific movie."
Some evangelical critics are not willing to abandon the boycott.
"The departure of the prickly, anti-Christian Michael Eisner, and the advent of the Narnia project might open lines that could lead to a new understanding," says Bob Knight of Concerned Women for America. "Political realities are catching up to Disney, as well, as wiggle room disappears in the culture war."
Best seller Since it was published in the 1950s, Lewis' Narnia series has sold 85 million copies worldwide. Disney's animated features have been international staples for nearly 75 years.
In the Narnia story, a lion named Aslan is a Christ-like figure who offers himself as a sacrifice to save another character. He is tortured and killed.
Then later he is resurrected to transform Narnia into a heaven on Earth.
So far, small groups of Christian leaders and opinion makers from Western states have been invited to Disney's Burbank studios for briefings and screenings of sequences from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Ted Baehr, founder of the Christian-oriented Movie Guide, called the presentation a "wonderful dog-and-pony show. I think they're going to do a great job marketing to the church."
Baehr is author of the forthcoming overview of Lewis' work, Narnia Beckons: C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe � and Beyond, which is being published by an arm of the Southern Baptist Convention.
There is reason for skepticism about how Lewis, who is beloved by Christians for his religious commitment and his influential collection of essays, Mere Christianity, will be treated in popular culture.
Memo revealed In 2001, HarperCollins, the U.S. publishers of the Narnia books, issued an internal memo � revealed by the New York Times � in which executives urged colleagues to downplay the books' religious dimensions to market them to a mainstream audience.
Any efforts to de-emphasize the religious aspects of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe film are bound to backfire with Christians, according to Take One's Nicolosi.
"Disney and (co-producer) Walden Media are aware that there's a proprietary sense about The Chronicles of Narnia," she says. "C.S. Lewis is our guy. They better not take that away from us." The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, based on Lewis' novel for children and Christian allegory, will be released Dec. 9.
For Disney, the Christian marketing campaign represents a sharp break with corporate policy. Apart from Disney World's annual Nights of Joy concerts, the film is the company's first undertaking with the religious community. For some evangelical leaders, it represents the effective end of their Disney boycott.
The entertainment giant, which bills itself as a "Magic Kingdom," has carefully avoided religion for most of its history. Yet Disney has launched a 10-month campaign aimed at evangelical Christians to build support for Narnia, a $100 million, live-action and computer-generated animated feature it is co-producing with Walden Media.
Disney has hired several Christian marketing groups to handle the film, including Motive Marketing, which ran the historic, grass-roots efforts for The Passion. That film has grossed $611 million worldwide and is now in re-release. "From a marketing point of view, it could be a marriage made in heaven � if the movie is any good," says Adele Reinhartz, professor of religion at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada.
Dr. Armand Nicholi, who for decades has taught a Harvard seminar on C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud, agrees. The entertainment world realizes there's a big audience "that embraces a spiritual world view," he says. How well these groups interact "will determine how successful this marriage is."
Paul Lauer, founder of Motive Marketing, declined to comment on his campaign for Narnia, apart from confirming that his firm is handling it.
"Disney, as the consummate corporate animal, is looking at Paul as the guy who delivered the audience of The Passion," says Barbara Nicolosi, of Act One, a program designed to bring Christian writers and executives into the entertainment industry.
Another Christian firm, Grace Hill Media, also has been hired, and several groups have joined the marketing effort. For instance, the Christian Web site hollywoodjesus.com launched a special feature on its site recently devoted to The Chronicles of Narnia.
For its part, Disney is trying to play down the Christian marketing approach, noting that it will reach out to the science-fiction and fantasy communities, as well.
"We don't want to cater to one fan base over the other, or at the expense of another," says Dennis Rice, Disney's senior vice president for public relations.
"33 Posts of comments about the article you posted at the present time.
Care to reply?"
Zots post something and then don't reply. It's amazing how easy these people are to profile.
No one can seriously question C.S. Lewis's credentials as a Christian.
Sir or ma'am:
You need to try much harder not to sound foolish in public.
I myself was resued from a life of teenaged cheapjack lunk-hood by the Chronicles of Narnia and set happily on the path back to Christ. I will not have a word said against the books.
I don't know which of the two videos (the cartoon or the BBC live-actions films) you saw, but it is extraordinarliy silly to watch a middlingly-done film adaptation of one book, and then to blithely dismiss an entire series of books that have likely done far more than you have to bring others back to God and Christ and give them joy in His service.
I am not foolish enough to expect a retraction or an apology for so wholesale and defamatory a statement as the sort you have uttered. A becoming silence in the face of your own ignorance is quite enough.
Incredibly sincerely,
Dunce
I saw the trailer at the movies about a month ago, it looks great. First Lord of the Rings, now this. I'm looking forward to going and taking my kids too.
oh my gosh.
do a little more reading before trashing one of the greatest Christian/Christian-themed writers of the 20th century.
or is it not on the approved reading list of your sect?
True, that.
I think the important part is the message. This is probably why I don't have a problem with Harry Potter either. The fictional "wizards and witches" setting is really just a backdrop for well-written and uplifting stories. It's harmless make-believe, and the reader knows it.
http://www.apple.com/trailers/disney/thechroniclesofnarnia/
I haven't read any entirely, but just watching the lion the witch and the wardrobe, I could tell that it was occultic right away. So I tossed it in the trash. A few days later, I was on the web looking at something else when I happened on information about the Chronicles and CS Lewis that confirmed my suspicions.
Sure - or it could simply just be left-wingers looking to incrementally put their pro-gay agenda onto children. Because Lord knows they've never attempted that before!
Do folks have a problem with the BBC videos? If so, what specifically are the problems?
reading posts like this it is no wonder many "Christians" come across as uneducated baffoons.
Not in any sect. Don't call sun worship, witchcraft, etc Christian.
I am definately going to see this movie
a. because I want to
and
b. because Disney needs to be reminded of the massive segment of the population they have alienated.
The boycott didn't work? Hogwash. We aren't even in the stats anymore, they don't know we exist, so they don't know the business they have lost. The Passion was a kick in the face.
I live near Disneyworld. Everytime a family came to visit me, I always asked them about seeing Disney. More than half of them said they would rather go someplace else; they didn't want to give Disney the business. I know there are several movies I have not seen like Pearl Harbor. They've lost business, no doubt about it.
Also, whenever anyone asks me about Orlando, I always tell them not to come in May or June because of the gay stuff being shoved in your face. Not once has anyone said to me, Oh, that doesn't bother me. They all say, "Thanks for the heads up!"
Not uneducated, just verrrry narrow minded.
"Do folks have a problem with the BBC videos? If so, what specifically are the problems?"
Too much Beaver.
I'll be going to see the movie. The preview is stunning. :-)
LOL!
Lewis was very much a Christian. But he was also a Medieval Literature specialist and his own literature carried a lot of those themes. I'm very careful about those things, but I really, really like Lewis. My own child watched the videos and read the books.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!
(and i've never said that in a post before)
would you mind sharing what religious sect you belong to?
you are unreal. thanks for the good laugh.
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