Oh brother!
http://www.thepoliticalcesspool.org/jamesedwards/2010/01/08/churches-are-now-ad-vehicles-for-hollywood-movies/
Churches are now ad vehicles for Hollywood movies
The Blind Side, about rich white Christians who adopt a 350 lb black teenager who goes on to play in the NFL, is one of the most popular movies of the year. It's already grossed $200 million, which is astonishing considering it's not an "action hero"Â movie, or filled with amazing special effects. But it's less astonishing when you find out that thousands and thousands of churches allowed their "worship services"Â to be turned into ads for the movie. Hollywood even provided sermon outlines based on the movie.
Long before the film, which is based on Michael Lewis' bestselling, non-fiction book about a wealthy, Evangelical couple in Memphis who welcome a poor, African-American kid into their home and see him go on to become a high-school football phenomenon, was first making wavesâ€"back in November, it did the unthinkable and unseated Twilight: New Moon in its third weekend at the box officeâ€"Grace Hill Media, a marketing and PR firm that specializes in faith-based audiences, was aggressively selling The Blind Side to pastors and ministers around the country. (Alcon Entertainment, which financed and produced the film, worked with Warner Bros. on more traditional marketing.)
The film's enormous Christian audience, while not the only reason for its success (the movie is considered a "four quadrant"Â hit that is appealing to male, female, young and old) "definitely has a lot to do with its staying power,"Â said Jeff Bock, a box-office analyst at Exhibitor Relations. "It acted like one of those faith-based films that didn't go down at the box office weekend to weekend. Eight weeks later, it's still strong."Â
One of Grace Hill's most innovative techniques was to provide half a dozen clips from The Blind Side, along with "sermon outlines,"Â to 22,000 megachurches (most of which are equipped with huge screens, typically used to display lyrics to rock hymns). Pastors were encouraged to, while showing a movie clip to their congregation, apply a "biblical connection"Â and "life application"Â contained in the Grace Hill promotional materials.
The notes to one outline, called "Turning the Car Around"Ââ€"which is based on the scene in which Leigh Anne Tuohy persuades her husband to stop and pick up "Big Mike" Oher from the side of the road on a cold, damp nightâ€"suggest this as a "sermon starter"Â: "Has God ever nudged your heart? Maybe you've driven past someone and felt a tug, a sudden surge of compassion. The Spirit may have prompted you to act."Â
The accompanying biblical connection references the passage from Matthew 25:35-36: "For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink; I was a stranger and you took me in"¦"Â
According to Jonathan Bock, the founder and president of Grace Hill (no relation to Jeff Bock), a typical megachurch seats about 400 people. Thus this marketing effort alone reached nearly 9 million people. Then there were the early screenings for religious groups; the press junkets to which members of the Christian media were invited; and calls to spread the word about The Blind Side on Twitter and through other social-networking means.