Los Angeles, USA - In the summer blockbuster movie "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie play godless suburbanites and professional assassins. But when they steal their neighbor's car, a crucifix hangs conspicuously from the rear-view mirror, and in the next scene the actors wear borrowed jackets that read "Jesus Rocks."
"We decided to make the next-door neighbor, whose crucifix it is, be hip, young, cool Christians," explained the movie's director, Doug Liman. "It's literally in there for no other reason than I thought: This is cool."
Liman isn't alone. Mainstream Hollywood, after decades of ignoring the pious, is adjusting to what it perceives to be a rising religiosity in American culture.
Last year's "Passion of the Christ," directed by Mel Gibson, took in an astonishing $370 million at the domestic box office when released in February 2004 and helped change attitudes and practices in an industry usually known for its secularism.
"Mel Gibson did us a service," said Bob Waliszewski, a media specialist with Focus on the Family, an evangelical group that was invited with about 30 other such organizations last February to see an early trailer of Disney's "Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." The studio is making a concerted push to include Christian organizations throughout the production and marketing of what it hopes will become a major Narnia franchise. (The film is to open in December.)
"The Hollywood elites' eyes widened big time," Waliszewski said. "They said, 'I thought the church was dead. I didn't think people cared. Is it possible that we don't know what's happening in state after state?' And the answer is a resounding yes."
The meaning of the term "Christian moviegoer" may vary from one movie professional to another. But overall, specialists talk repeatedly about affirming Christian values and biblical truths. They speak about removing all profanity and explicitly evoking Jesus, prayer and church attendance.
Universal, for example, showed "Ray" at various churches to promote it by word of mouth but learned that while churchgoers loved the film, they objected to profanity using the word "God."
The director, Taylor Hackford, who had already expunged from the script stronger four-letter obscenities to satisfy his Christian financier, Philip F. Anschutz, made the choice not to edit the film further. But it cost the studio the active support of some church advocates.
Actor Peter Sarsgaard, speaking at the Seattle Film Festival recently, said he was instructed to strike the word "Jesus" from his dialogue during shooting this year of the forthcoming Disney thriller "Flightplan."
"They said: 'You can't say that. You can't take the Lord's name in vain,' " Sarsgaard said he was told by the film's producers.
Jonathan Bock, a former sitcom writer who founded Grace Hill Media to specialize in Christian marketing, was hired to help sell Universal's "Cinderella Man," Fox's "Kingdom of Heaven" and Sony Pictures' "Christmas With the Kranks." He is also advising Sony on what is likely to be one of the most problematic movies of the coming year for Christian moviegoers, "The Da Vinci Code," based on the best-selling novel that challenges basic Christian dogma. Bock and Sony both declined to discuss "The Da Vinci Code."
To complicate matters, a new study by a leading Hollywood marketing firm, MarketCast, suggested that not only do Christians watch mainstream entertainment, but the most conservative among them are also drawn to violent fare.
The study of 1,000 moviegoers asked respondents to define their level of religiosity. About 70 percent of respondents said they were "somewhat" or "very" religious.
The researchers found that "when it comes to popular movies and popular shows, tastes don't differ at all" between religious and nonreligious, said Joseph Helfgot, president of MarketCast. "What you find is that people with conservative religious doctrine are the most likely to see movies rated R for violence. If you compared it to liberals, it's a third more."
Specialists talk repeatedly about affirming Christian values and biblical truths.