2012 Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum is about to make his mark on the “socialist,” “anti-value” industry known as Hollywood. It has been announced that the former senator has been elected CEO of EchoLight Studios, a faith-based production company.
Though Santorum has acknowledged that he is open to running for president again in 2016 (he did come out of last year’s Republican primary with around 250 delegates), he has been helping EchoLight raise money for the last six months. Aiming to be a leader in the faith-and-family movie market, Santorum has stated, “For too long, Hollywood has had a lock on influencing the youth of this country with a flawed message that goes against our values. Now, we can change that.”
The Texas-based studio is about to receive a $20 million fund that it will use to finance, produce and distribute movies centered around traditional values. While $20 million isn’t much by Hollywood standards, faith-based films have taken off in recent years due to a successful formula. Despite the films being made on a low budget with unknown actors, production companies are able to target their marketing campaigns to a consuming Christian audience.
Though Mel Gibson’s 2004 The Passion of the Christ became an unprecedented blockbuster, the current trend really began in 2008 with Fireproof. From a mere $500,000 budget Fireproof went on to gross $33.5 million at the box office, making it the highest grossing independent film of that year. More recently, 2011’s Courageous about a Georgia police force trying to stop drug smuggling in the city surpassed Fireproof’s success. The film took in more than Oscar-nominated indies The Iron Lady, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, or My Week With Marilyn. As major studios have started developing Christian-faith film departments and investors keep backing studios like EchoLight, these types of films will continue to proliferate.
EchoLight, plans to produce four films per year, with its first film, The Redemption of Henry Myers, slated to be released this fall. Santorum has joined the studio just as they are wrapping production on Hoovey, an inspirational biopic about Illinois basketball player Eric “Hoovey” Elliott. The film is directed by Sean McNamara, who helmed 2011’s Soul Surfer, which, Santorum claims, was edited by the studio to minimize references to the Bible (Soul Surfer was released by Affirm Films, Sony’s faith based/inspirational subsidiary).
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