The Catholic News Hub links to the Diocese of Bridgeport’s piece on the USCCB reviewer whom many Catholics felt was not foam-mouthed enough about that movie.

Forbes is right on many points, including one: many of his attackers did not read his review. As for the supposed tanking of that movie at the box office, Gregg Kilday, of The Hollywood Reporter had a few thoughts:

And while the movie has been treated as a potential franchise, a la Lord of the Rings, in some ways, it was never fated to be like that. The Pullman trilogy isn’t as well known, and this is a fantasy built around a young girl.

… in reaching out to younger females, it obviously ran up against Enchanted.

Interesting. Hollywood seems to be conceding that backlash from religious groups contributed somewhat to a box office performance about 30 to 40 percent under expectations. It’s also interesting that one Hollywood insider thinks there’s a limited market for more than one female-driven fantasy at a time.

I read one opinion that attached opposition to that movie to strong women characters–religious people don’t like that, the thought goes.

More likely, it’s a failure of imagination. If more excellent movies were out there, people would go to them. If Hollywood thinks geeky guys don’t want to see beautiful and strong women in film, and young girls have limited budgets for moviegoing, I don’t have anything constructive to say to them. Hollywood doesn’t have a clue with sf and fantasy. Lots of good stuff was made in spite of studio execs. Lots of studio execs stumbled into good stories paired with good filmmakers. And often when they get them together, greed and ego still get in the way.

About these ads