While faith-based films have grown sharply over the past few decades and drawn a global audience, mainstream movie studios still largely steer clear of these projects despite a clear economic upside, Daniel Parris writes in his Substack newsletter Stat Significant (September 25). The early 2000s witnessed the emergence of numerous independent studios dedicated to creating faith-driven narratives for spiritually minded audiences. But most moviegoers will not recognize the names of these production companies or their films, which is part of a “never-ending cycle of cultural amnesia and discovery, a broken feedback loop” that plays out as follows: When a faith-based movie performs well, as in the case of Heaven is Real or Fireproof, it is touted as the “future of entertainment,” but after “a solid week of internet discourse, most people quickly forget the success of this faith-based film and the existence of these independent studios—only to be surprised when another breakthrough hit emerges a year or two later.” Parris traces this ambivalent and often negative attitude toward faith-based films to the secularization of mainstream movies over the past 50 years. The success of The Passion of the Christ in single-handedly birthing today’s faith-based film industry proved both the latent demand for such films and mainstream critics’ rejection of them.
In analyzing the production budgets of faith-based films, Parris finds the widespread use of lesser-known actors or former Hollywood stars (such as Dennis Quaid), and relatable, low-concept themes (often criticized for their lack of complexity, even by religious critics). And yet, despite quality concerns, “these movies are consistently profitable, regularly grossing 1.5x their budget (Hollywood’s back-of-the-envelope breakeven point)…When we group films by average user reviews and sort them into quality quartiles, faith-based projects show exceptional returns across the board, demonstrating strong performance for poorly rated projects and critically acclaimed films (with at least 50 percent of movies achieving profitability, no matter their critical reception).” Parris adds that “At some point, Hollywood stopped making many movies to satisfy diverse audiences and started making singular franchise events for every person with a wallet—these movies have no meaningful ideas outside of fan service and the prolonging of a franchise.” That’s why he thinks that Hollywood’s embrace of religion-driven stories and their integration into modern blockbuster filmmaking would breed dissatisfaction. He concludes that the “story of faith-driven movies is yet another example of Chesterton’s Fence: there is likely a reason why things turned out this way, and to disturb this equilibrium would potentially yield lackluster results (displeasing to all).”
