First press for "One Night with the King"
Looks like O'Toole's next release is a biblio-pic. O'Toole plays "Samuel, the Prophet", and his old pal, Omar Sharif, stars as "Prince Memucan". -Hamish
Official Site here.
Movie viral marketing on a biblical scale
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It stars Peter O'Toole, Omar Shariff, John Rhys-Davies and John Noble (both of Lord of the Rings), among others.It cost $20 million and was shot in palace locations in India.
And it opens on 1,000 screens on (as part of AMC's "select" program of speciality films, here) Friday, Oct. 13. No, it's not a horror movie, and no, you probably haven't heard a peep about it. But One Night With the King is being marketed, alright.This is a Christian-funded film, distributed (on DVD, at least), by Fox/Faith, the "Let's get that Mel Gibson kinda money" arm of 20th Century Fox.
Rhys: I sat in on one of the pep rallies/outreach sessions for it in Orlando Wednesday. A hundred or so ministers and their families heard from novelist Tommy Tenney and producers Matt and Laurie Crouch, of the evangelical TV (Trinity Broadcasting) Crouches. One Night is an adaptation of the Biblical story of Hadassah/Esther, the Jewish girl in Babylon who saved her people from the Persians by charming Xerxes. It's not a "political movie," Matt Crouch said, but he noted similarities between today's headlines about Iran and Israel, and the story from the Bible.
From Matt Crouch... A movie is a chance to get on the playing field. We're gaining access to the hearts of the ungodly without them knowing it. Go back to your people (congregations), and fill every theater that weekend. Set the stage for what God wants to do in Christian film.
From Laurie Crouch... Touch your neighbor and say, "I AM the merketing department" for this movie."Tenney joked about their movie being "good counter-programming" to the rash of horror movies opening in October, and went so far as to suggest that this might be "a dark horse at the Oscars."
The usual "us against them" boiler-plate popped up, as they noted how they had a "friendly" theater manager (somebody already familiar with the movie, i.e. a believer), and how they were pushing a "values based movie" into an industry that "discounts the success" of values-based movies, from Passion to Narnia, and how both of those films bested Brokeback Mountain at the box office. If you want values driven movies in the marketplace, you need to show up that opening weekend," Tenney said. "You GO God."
The Brokeback crack and the occasional Christian buzzphrase, "a mandate to take dominion" was a little chilling (I was invited, but got the impression they didn't realize a secular reporter/critic was there), frankly, given Christian conservatism's passion for blind-faith political judgments and homophobia. The military parlance about Hollywood ("get behind enemy lines") and their embracing of Apocalyptic movie claptrap like The Omega Code gives me pause.
Peter: But the movie looks pretty good (they had a rough cut of about 20 minutes of it), and seems a pretty inviting and positive expression of Christianity on film, as opposed to the torture and exclusionary (insider's) tone of The Passion of the Christ.
Michael O. Sajbel, a director with experience making Christian documentaries and Billy Graham films, directed. The winsome Tiffany Dupont plays Esther, Rhys-Davies is her dad, Mordecai (and apparently narrator, a great choice), O'Toole and Shariff, together again for the first time since Lawrence of Arabia made them famous, show up.
That Friday the 13th will see The Grudge 2 opening, which is counter-programming. And Man of the Year, a Robin Williams political satire. There's a conservative WWE-backed actioner, The Marine, which could draw away from One Night, but otherwise, it's only a low screen count holding the film back.Well, and the Sarah Michelle Gellar crowd.
Could make for an interesting box office sweepstakes, if the hundreds of pastors contacted across the country make it happen. And there's always room for an audience that Hollywood, frankly, doesn't care to serve.