Religious Groups Show Their Muscle in Hollywood
The astounding success of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ last year has helped make Hollywood studios keenly aware of the power of Christian conservatives and has altered many of the images and dialogue presented in current movies, the New York Times indicated today (Monday).
The newspaper noted that in the recent Mr. and Mrs. Smith, a crucifix was hung on a rearview mirror in a chase sequence and the stars at one point wore jackets reading "Jesus Rocks." On the other hand, actor Peter Sarsgaard recently disclosed that the epithet "Jesus" was stricken from his dialogue in the Disney movie Flightplan and replaced with the word "shoot."
Sarsgaard remarked, "That [word] isn't as good." The Times reported that several experts on marketing to Christian families have been hired by studios recently, including one to work on Disney's The Chronicles of Narnia and another to work on Sony's The Da Vinci Code (which already has drawn numerous protests from some Catholic groups).