Actually the Hollywood Studio execs wouldn’t touch the Passion so they had no part in making the Passion nor do the normal Hollywood Execs have any plans of making religious themed movies a Evangelical Christian Billoinare is financing the Chronicles of Narnia series though his company Walden.
The only thing DIsney is doing is distributing it like they do the Pixar films they have no creative control of the project and financed none of the project save for marketing.
So the Passion and the Narnia series both were done outside the Hollywoood Industry.
Those who point to the recycled TV shows and remakes of old movies have a point Hollywood wants a built in audience however they make and fincance many movies that plainly will loose money just because of thieir racy content. Its been known that G and PG rated movies make more money than R rated movies but Hollywood makes more R Rated movies than the family firendly ratings also most independent movies have racie storylines glorfiying violence, homosexuality, etc these filsm are hits with the few crticis and sometimes win awards but they don’t make money.
Just look at how Hollywood glorfied the likes of abortion in Oscar nominated Vera Drake last year and glofied euthanasia in Oscar winning films the Sea Inside and the Million Dollar Baby. Now what these movies made paled in comparions to the Passion but the Passion was shut out of the insiders Oscar awards and while all 3 films dealt with subject matter that don’t figure to draw a big box office they got financed anyway. The Passion despite being produced by a past Oscar winning director (Mel Gibson) was not able to get financing from the Hollywood Studio System.
There is something to be said for the corruption going in Hollywood and its anti-religious bent. It’s very real and evidenct and Hollywood is suffering financially because of its agenda driven drivel.
I was reading an article about the Lack of Postive Roles for Heterosexual Male actors they are non-existent. Hollywood Actor James Wood says he can’t read a script anymore that has a postivie male role model that is heterosexual - they are non-existent in Hollywood.
This has been real evident since the Movie AMerican Beauty which potray the heterosexul males in the movie as dysfunctional or just rerpressed homosexuals. The openly homosexual males where the only positive and likeable men in the whole movie. And this trend has contineued form that point on. The Passion was a hit for that reason alone it had a postiive male role model that wasn’t a cartoon or gay very rare outside of Pixar.