The New York Times (the newspaper of *cough* *cough* record) covers the ad campaign for the DVD release of Mel Gibson's "The Passion", and this time, Hollywood's on board:
By rewriting the rules of movie marketing - bypassing the Hollywood sales machinery in favor of direct appeals to churchgoing Christians - Mel Gibson turned "The Passion of the Christ" into this year's most unlikely movie blockbuster. Now, with DVD's and videos of the film going on sale next week, Hollywood is courting the faithful, hoping to turn "The Passion" into one of the industry's biggest sellers.
Twentieth Century Fox, which passed on a chance to release the controversial movie in theaters, has been wooing pastors at 260,000 churches to buy the movie in bulk and targeting more than six million Christian households with e-mail messages. The studio's home-entertainment unit describes the campaign - which is emphasizing sales in the South and Midwest, where the movie was most popular - as its most exhaustive Christian marketing effort ever.
I wonder how hard Mel will have to sell his next movie to that bunch of naysayers. Will he even give 'em a chance?
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