Previous entry: Selling, the sole objective: Maximizing the Mormon marketing experience
Next entry: Pope: Adored by many, attacked by others
Related
Advertisements *
Advertise Here *
Elsewhere
Subscribe: RSS
 |
RNB's RSS feed What is this? |
Subscribe: Email
 |
 Subscribe by Email What is this? |
Most Popular
- Attorney stymied by anti-polygamy activist’s TV demand
- Man killed at Hollywood Scientology center had made prior threats, police say
- Hate incidents in U.S. surge
- Five leaders of Muslim charity convicted in terrorism financing trial
- Swordsman Had Threatened Scientology Before
- Netherlands will extend burqa ban to universities
- California county OKs limits on picketing in response to anti-Scientology protests
- AUM Shinrikyo bankruptcy procedures to end, victims get 40% of compensation
- Mercy Ministries exorcism books leaked
- 8 new charges filed against jailed Tony Alamo
Disney to market film to evangelicals
More articles on this topic: Chronicles of Narnia`Chronicles of Narnia’ campaign represents break with corporate policy
In a marriage of modern myth makers, 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.
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 worldview,” 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.
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.
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.
It won’t be over “until the Southern Baptists, American Family Association, Concerned Women for America and others actually decide to call it off,” says Bob Knight of Concerned Women for America.
What You Can Do From Here
|
Read More Articles On These Topics
Share, Blog, or Email This Article
Subscribe
Read Another Article
Previous entry: Selling, the sole objective: Maximizing the Mormon marketing experience Next entry: Pope: Adored by many, attacked by others
RNB Homepage with latest headlinesFind Related Information
Find Related Books
|
Share This Article
To share this page simply copy and paste one of these URL's:
