Link:

http://www.filmstew.com/Content/DailyNews/Details.aspContentID=8991&Pg=1

Monday, June 21, 2004

No Box Office Miracle for Saved!

The religious satire starring Mandy Moore, Macaulay Culkin and Jena
Malone sinks quickly in wide release despite a promising debut and
perceived heat about its subject matter.

By FilmStew Staff Report



Other than both being ingenues, actors Macaulay Caulkin and Jena
Malone have little in common right now beyond the surprising box
office drop-off of their religiously themed teen drama Saved! in its
second week of wide theatrical release. According to
BoxOfficeMojo.com, the film experienced a 51.6% tumble this past
weekend as it played in just under 600 theaters across the United
States.

While the film's cumulative take of $6.5 million certainly
isn't
terrible and now surpasses the total production budget, it's
something of a disappointment in light of the anticipated
controversy surrounding the film's subject matter and some very
healthy per-screen averages - from $10,000 to $22,000 - during
Saved!'s first few weeks of limited release beginning Memorial
Day
Weekend.

When Culkin spoke to FilmStew last month, he recalled going to a
Christian rock concert in Anaheim, CA for research purposes and
noticing a group of fundamentalist Christians picketing outside the
arena. The actor thought to himself that if Christians could find a
reason to picket other Christians, there was no way his movie Saved!
would not offend someone.

However, although there was some chattering from naysayers on the
Internet and elsewhere during the production of Culkin's PG-13
rated
satire, it would appear that the threat of a public outcry in the
shadow of the fury accompanying The Passion of the Christ did not
nearly come to pass. In all likelihood, Saved! will quietly slip
away from theaters in the next few weeks and perhaps provoke more
discussion when it comes out later this year on DVD.

"It was so funny to see Christians picketing each other,"
says
Culkin of the concert experience. "So what makes us think that we
can get away with a movie where someone isn't going to be
offended,
at least on the outside of it. From the outside, we're dealing
with
unwed teenage mothers and homosexuality and things like that, and so
from the outside it could be semi-taboo."

In the end, both Culkin and his co-star Jena Malone's hope at the
time of their interviews that Saved! be perceived as having a pro-
faith spiritual message may have been closer to the mark. "To me,
I
find, as an audience member, that it's very much pro-faith,"
suggests Malone. "It's got a very pro-Christian message about
the
basic teachings of what Jesus was sort of saying, like acceptance
and do unto others as you'd have done to you. What you put out
into
the world is what you're going to get."

Adds Culkin: "It's really a faith-based movie with a good
Christian
message, with a good message overall," he argues. "The basis
of any
religion, let alone one with Christ in it, is be a good person, be
good to the people around you and accept people for who they are.
And I think that's the underlying message in this movie."

At this point, comments such as the May 28th pronouncements of Ted
Baehr, founder of the Christian Film & Television Commission, who
according to IMDB called Saved!, "A sad, bigoted anti-Christian
movie that mocks the Christian faith," seem like a tempest in a
teapot that never boiled.