Paramount Tweaks 'Noah' Marketing to Soothe Whiny Religious Groups

Paramount has been facing an uphill battle trying to win over religious groups in the lead-up to Darren Aronofsky's Bibical epic, Noah. In the wake of test screenings that showed some people of faith took issue with Aronofsky's approach to the material, which includes his adding a number of elements not part of the original text, Paramount has decided to alter its marketing for the film at the request of a religious broadcasting group.

In a statement released by Paramount and The National Religious Broadcasters, the studio will now add an explanatory message ahead of any future marketing material for Noah, so that audiences know that this is not a straight re-telling of the story but a dramatization inspired by the story of Noah. Oh for Chrissakes! Here is the text of the message that will be included in future trailers, the movie's website, and all radio and print materials....

“The film is inspired by the story of Noah.
While artistic license has been taken, we believe that this film is true to the essence, values, and integrity of a story that is a cornerstone of faith for millions of people worldwide.
The biblical story of Noah can be found in the book of Genesis.”

The move was made after an appeal by Jerry Johnson, President CEO of The National Religious Broadcasters, and he at least seems appreciative Paramount decided to make this move. 

 Johnson: "We are grateful that Paramount is striving, with this disclaimer, to strike a proper balance between artistic creativity, character development, and honoring the sacred Scripture." 

Never mind that if Aronofsky had stuck to the text we'd be talking about a 15-minute movie, but whatever. As distasteful as I may find this, it's a move I understand Paramount making. With the bulk of the attention recently focusing on the number of Christians who won't see the movie at the urging of some religious websites, they had to do something like this to try and get those people back. Never mind that the studio and Aronofsky have been bending themselves into pretzels for weeks to say the film respects the beliefs of people of faith.

But what I want to know is where does this go now? Does it mean if enough people complain we can get a disclaimer in front of Son of God claiming it was inspired by the work of men and not the word of an imaginary deity? Because if so, send that petition my way now.

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Poll Says Christians Already Hate 'Noah' without Having Seen It

A few days ago, THR ran a piece about Darren Aronofsky's troubled production on Noah (we wrote about it here), the massive Biblical epic he's been developing with Warner Bros. The story basically recounted how the director and studio fought over the version of the film to be presented, and the efforts they went to in order to make those of faith comfortable with Aronofsky's interpretation of the familiar story.  The film, which reportedly cost north of $130M, has an uphill climb if religious groups refuse to turn out, and ridiculous polls like the one released by Faith Driven Consumer aren't going to help.

In their badly-worded, obviously biased poll, they report that 98% of Christians (out of 5000 supporters according to Washington Examiner) aren't satisfied with Hollywood even attempting a Biblical film, much less one that dares to have a message they may not agree with. Here's the rather terrible phrasing of the question...

 "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?"

What I hate about this is that it has an obvious anti-Hollywood bias, as if everybody on the left coast are a bunch of godless heathens. That's the narrative a lot of these sites like to push (unless they're talking about their "heroes" like Chuck Norris or Ronald Reagan, then they LOVE Hollywood), and the implication that Noah has somehow ripped out the crux of the Bible's message feeds into that. Of course, nobody over at Faith Driven Consumer has seen the movie. Apparently they didn't read the THR article in full, either, otherwise they would have seen Aronofsky and the film's producers talking at length about their desire to be true to the story while filling in the many blanks with fresh material.

Of course, some other right-wing, faith-based sites have picked up on this story and are using it to claim that Christians will stay away from Noah in droves and perhaps go check out Son of God instead. Actually, it sounds more like these sites are encouraging people to do that. We'll see what happens, but if these folks are upset now about Hollywood making movies based on the Bible then it's going to be a rough couple of years.

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