Crystal Dove Seal trophies given Hollywood execs

Best Family Movies of 2008 Receive Crystal Dove Seal Awards
Source: http://www.dove.org/

April 1, 2009 (Grand Rapids, MI) - The Dove Foundation announced today the winners of the CRYSTAL DOVE SEAL, an award designed to highlight Hollywood’s film-making achievements for the vast and diverse family audience. The CRYSTAL DOVE SEAL pays special tribute to those companies that have demonstrated increased awareness in the value of providing the huge family audience with more appropriate choices.

Dove posted a ballot on its website at http://www.dove.org/ during the month of February inviting visitors to cast a vote for their favorite Dove Approved movies in seven categories, Comedy, Drama, Action/Adventure, Animated Feature, Documentary, Musical, and Limited Release. Thousands of online voters selected the “best of the best” Dove Family-Approved movies for 2008.

Dove Foundation co-founder and CEO, Dick Rolfe just returned from Los Angeles where he presented the solid crystal trophies for this year's winners. “These outstanding films represent the highest examples of quality storytelling combined with positive values that most Americans hold dear,” Rolfe said.

Fox and Walden Team Up for Narnia

Variety announced it as official. As I predicted, Fox will partner with Walden to continue producing the next installment(s) of the wonderful Chronicles of Narnia series. I've been reading Voyage of the Dawn Treader and it should prove to be another hit. My only concern it the dramatically reduced budget, south of $150 million.

Due to recent safety threats they are not going to film this water wonderland movie at the Fox-owned Rosarito Mexico, home base of "Titanic" and "Master and Commander." Instead, they are going to Australia which will add to the overhead.

Fox will certainly have better results with Narnia than they did with Eragon. More as it develops...

Disney Dumps Dawn Treader

Well, it's official. Disney has dropped out of the Narnia franchise and won't participate in "Voyage of the Dawn Treader." See story at Reuters.com

This could be a bad time for Walden Media or a freeing time, it depends on who they collaborate with to complete this epic franchise.

Disney was always timid about the Christian imagery in the Narnia stories. During "The Lion Witch and Wardrobe," Disney emphasized the secular messages in the film while Walden and Douglas Gresham (Lewis' stepson) launched a religious grassroots marketing strategy. Both Disney and Walden ignored the religious market when promoting "Prince Caspian," assuming that the first episode would be enough impetus for the Christian "underground" to carry their water.

Unfortunately, a prevailing message that preceeded the opening of Caspian was that "it is much more violent that LW&WR...more like 'Lord of the Rings'." This was a needless turnoff, since the level of violence is pretty much the same in both episodes, it's just that there are more battle scenes in Caspian.

I heard that Walden made a calculated error by postponing the opening of "Prince Caspian" to give "Nim's Island" which opened April 4th a better chance against competition. That decision did nothing to help "Nim's Island." In fact, Caspian's debute of May 15th was quickly deflated by "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" which opened May 21st.

I believe that a Fox-Walden co-production will help greatly in making sure the message is pure Lewis, and in marketing the film properly to faith-based, faith-friendly and family-friendly audiences.

Of course, there is also a possibility that Sony may want to play a role, given Amy Pascal's recent comments about looking for more family-oriented opportunities.

In the final analysis...Aslan is still on the move!

Speaking of 3-D...

I just read the following summary report from Nielson Research about consumer reactions to 3-D movies. The sales increases may help boost sales for "Journey to the Center of the Earth," given the fact that there are fewer screens equipped with 3-D which limits the size of the release.

NIELSEN FINDS STRONG CONSUMER APPETITE FOR 3-D FILMS BUT WEAK AWARENESS
Amsterdam, NL (June 23, 2008) - The Nielsen Company today reported that there is strong consumer appetite for 3-D films, based on a detailed analysis, that showed a 65% sales increase in theatres using 3-D technology to exhibit their moviesThe analysis, which was unveiled today by Nielsen PreView at the Cine Expo conference in The Netherlands, compared the film's performance in comparable theatres with a proven track record in the action/adventure genre. This like-to-like comparison provides a more sophisticated understanding on the impact of 3-D than other studies that simply looked at the performance of the movie in 3-D and 2-D theatres regardless of their historical ability to attract action/adventure movies."With all the upcoming hype around 3-D, we wanted to take a hard look and see if there is truly a consumer appetite for 3-D." says Ann Marie Dumais, SVP, Nielsen PreView . "Our new research approach contrasted theatres in such a way to demonstrate consumers, when given a choice, will choose 3-D."Nielsen PreView's 3-D study analyzed over 4,000 theatres in the United States. The research found theatres with at least one screen exhibiting in 3-D had a 65% increase in box office sales compared to their 2-D counterparts. Further, those theatres that chose to exhibit in 3-D on more than one screen saw their sales climb yet even higher to 100% versus what was expected, indicating that one 3-D screen per theatre may not be enough to satisfy consumer demand.While consumers have an appetite for 3-D films, they often lack awareness and education around what 3-D is and where to find it. In a recent Nielsen survey, 48% were unaware that their movie choices were even available in 3-D. The numbers cited in this study are likely to go even higher for the industry with increased marketing support and consumer education.