Scourging and Buzz
As the director and sole financial backer of The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson knows that good buzz means good box office. But Christian movies rarely inspire the word of mouth to launch a blockbuster. The Passion was an even harder sell because it features no big stars and requires subtitles to translate the Aramaic and Latin dialogue.
Gibson's solution? Skip the usual marketing drill. Instead, his company has launched an inventive direct-marketing campaign, getting the word out to the more 220 million Christians by sending 250,000 promotional DVDs to pastors around the country, asking that they be played for the congregations. A Web site (www.passionmaterials.com) supplied churches with hundreds of posters and postcards to pass out to their flocks. Licensed Passion merchandise, including a $16.99 necklace with a pewter nail and coffee mugs, is also available. Some 15,000 religious leaders were invited to advance screenings and 300 Passion summit meetings. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, praised The Passion on his radio program, heard by almost 2 million listeners.
Multiplex. The grass-roots approach worked. Our Lady of Greenwood Catholic Church in Indianapolis sold 550 tickets in less than half an hour. In St. Petersburg, Fla., a Catholic diocese-owned radio station raised $10,000 to rent 23 screens at a local cineplex. And in Plano, Texas, two members of a Baptist church paid for 6,000 tickets, enough to fill all the seats in a 20-screen multiplex on opening day. The movie opened at 3,000 theaters on Ash Wednesday. The first-day gross was $26.5 million, making it the third-biggest opening in history--just behind Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and Star Wars: Episode I--The Phantom Menace. Fandango reported that 98 percent of advance ticket sales for the week were for The Passion.
So how did the movie play for opening-day crowds? Many found it powerful and inspiring. Diosa Rivera, who watched the movie at the Avalon Theater in Washington, D.C., says, "It puts you in touch with the reality of what it is to be crucified. In previous movies, it's been romanticized."
But others were horrified by the R-rated film's long and graphic depiction of the beatings and Crucifixion, which Gibson argues are necessary to show the depth of Jesus's sacrifice. Molly Simmons Brusick, 17, noticed a group reaction at the Avalon showing: "Everybody was sliding down in their seats when he was being whipped. I was shaken by it." And one angry man who refused to give his name but not his opinion said, "This is the most violent and manipulative film I have ever seen." Witnessing torture may have been too much. One moviegoer in Wichita, Kan., died of an apparent heart attack during the Crucifixion scene. -Katy Kelly
This story appears in the March 8, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.