On Monday, Variety ran a short article about a survey from something called “Faith Driven Consumers” that dealt with the way that Hollywood handles Bible-related movies. According to the religious group’s findings, 98% of the people who support and follow Faith Driven Consumers are not “satisfied” with the way that Hollywood retells the stories from the Bible. More specifically, they were asked:
“As a Faith Driven Consumer, are you satisfied with a biblically themed movie – designed to appeal to you – which replaces the Bible’s core message with one created by Hollywood?”
Now, that’s obviously a hell of a lot different than what’s implied in the headline for Variety’s story: “Faith-Driven Consumers Dissatisfied with ‘Noah,’ Hollywood Religious Pics.” Most notably, the survey question doesn’t even mention Noah, but even more interesting is the fact that nobody has seen the Darren Aronofsky-directed film as of yet, which means that nobody except for Russell Crowe’s costume tailor can be upset with it.
Naturally, Paramount Pictures didn’t appreciate the unnecessary and unfair reference and issued a statement to convey that.
Paramount Pictures, distributor of Darren Aronofsky’s upcoming feature film “NOAH”, strongly disputes the inaccurate media story from Variety, who reported on a religious survey from the Faith Driven Consumer.
The question posed asked respondents if they were “satisfied with a biblically themed movie — designed to appeal to you — which replaces the Bible’s core message with one created by Hollywood.”
The survey question that had the 98% response rate did not contain any reference to the film “NOAH,” despite the fact that the Variety reporting implied that it did, and research from industry leading firms about the upcoming epic paints a very different picture. (Via Deadline)
Paramount went on to cite a bunch of information and numbers from specific religious groups, as well as the time-honored defense of “Well, we showed it to some pastors that we’re friends with and they loved it.” Ultimately, it seems like Variety got what it wanted in clicks and views by loosely tying in an upcoming movie, and Paramount received some unexpected controversial buzz that certainly won’t hurt it come March 28. And all that the Faith Driven Consumers want is for Hollywood to stop replacing Bible stories with porn star orgies, so it seems like this was all just a big misunderstanding that ultimately worked out in everyone’s favor. Hooray!