Charles Darwin film 'too controversial for religious America'
A British film about Charles Darwin has failed to find a US distributor because his theory of evolution is too controversial for American audiences, according to its producer.
By Anita Singh, Showbusiness Editor
Creation, starring Paul Bettany, details Darwin's "struggle between faith and reason" as he wrote On The Origin of Species. It depicts him as a man who loses faith in God following the death of his beloved 10-year-old daughter, Annie.
The film was chosen to open the Toronto Film Festival and has its British premiere on Sunday. It has been sold in almost every territory around the world, from Australia to Scandinavia.
However, US distributors have resolutely passed on a film which will prove hugely divisive in a country where, according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39 per cent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution.
Movieguide.org, an influential site which reviews films from a Christian perspective, described Darwin as the father of eugenics and denounced him as "a racist, a bigot and an 1800s naturalist whose legacy is mass murder". His "half-baked theory" directly influenced Adolf Hitler and led to "atrocities, crimes against humanity, cloning and genetic engineering", the site stated.
The film has sparked fierce debate on US Christian websites, with a typical comment dismissing evolution as "a silly theory with a serious lack of evidence to support it despite over a century of trying".
Jeremy Thomas, the Oscar-winning producer of Creation, said he was astonished that such attitudes exist 150 years after On The Origin of Species was published.
"That's what we're up against. In 2009. It's amazing," he said.
"The film has no distributor in America. It has got a deal everywhere else in the world but in the US, and it's because of what the film is about. People have been saying this is the best film they've seen all year, yet nobody in the US has picked it up.
"It is unbelievable to us that this is still a really hot potato in America. There's still a great belief that He made the world in six days. It's quite difficult for we in the UK to imagine religion in America. We live in a country which is no longer so religious. But in the US, outside of New York and LA, religion rules.
"Charles Darwin is, I suppose, the hero of the film. But we tried to make the film in a very even-handed way. Darwin wasn't saying 'kill all religion', he never said such a thing, but he is a totem for people."
Creation was developed by BBC Films and the UK Film Council, and stars Bettany's real-life wife Jennifer Connelly as Darwin's deeply religious wife, Emma. It is based on the book, Annie's Box, by Darwin's great-great-grandson, Randal Keynes, and portrays the naturalist as a family man tormented by the death in 1851 of Annie, his favourite child. She is played in the film by 10-year-old newcomer Martha West, the daughter of The Wire star Dominic West.
Early reviews have raved about the film. The Hollywood Reporter said: "It would be a great shame if those with religious convictions spurned the film out of hand as they will find it even-handed and wise."
Mr Thomas, whose previous films include The Last Emperor and Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, said he hoped the reviews would help to secure a distributor. In the UK, special screenings have been set up for Christian groups.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6173399/Charl...
Soul Cal
wow. how sad. but really, only 39% of americans believe in evolution?!?!? i feel like the number is much higher than that!!!
1Good for the US distributers. Darwin lost his faith in God, and spent the rest of his life trying to disprove His existence. Darwin couldn't do it.
2Only 39%? That must be wrong...
3Why is that Martini?
4I can't believe 39% of people would completely reject an observable theory that you can literally watch happen.
I wonder if the poll was worded such that it said something like "the theory of evolution of humans from primates."
It's obvious that evolution happens to anyone willing to think about it and look around.
5Or rather, 61% of people would reject it. I misread. That's even worse than I thought.
6Gallup Poll 2009: http://www.gallup.com/poll/114544/darwin-birthday-believe-evolution.aspx
Harris Poll 2005: http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=581
7"# Forty-nine percent of adults believe plants and animals have evolved from some other species while 45 percent do not believe that.
Again divided, 46 percent of adults agree that "Darwin’s theory of evolution is proven by fossil discoveries," while 48 percent disagree."
Thanks Steph. In the Gallup poll I still wonder if people conflated evolution with human evolution from apes. The Harris poll knocks out that criticism though.
And really, evolution/natural selection doesn't have to be proven by fossil discoveries, though it has. It can be proven with insects with large progeny and short lifespans in a matter of months.
8Hard for me to believe that many people reject evolution too! Guess that says something about the area I live in.
9I wonder if it has anything to do with the wording of the question.
10i find it odd with all the studio heads who are so liberal that they could not find a single distributor. One can believe in g-d and evolution. Maybe it is just the film itself is bad despite the critical reviews.
11I think the movie is just bad. There are so many bad movies that are put out here in American, some very immoral, nonreligious themes/content. So maybe this one is just REALLY dreadful beyond belief.
12UnDave, in logic you can't prove a negative. For example I can't prove that Santa clause lives, all I can say is I have found no evidence that he lives, but since we have explored the north Poll, determined that all presents attributed to Santa have been purchased. The best Darwin could do was point out he could find no of the existence of God, and that all evidence examined could be ascribed to natural events.
13You can use logic to prove a negative. For the negative to be true, the opposite of the negative must be false.
14GP have you not seen the Santa Clause - Santa lives under the NP.
There are those who believe in a supreme being and there are those who do not, room for both to walk the planet. If you take ones man's view on anything then the only thing you prove is that you are not very intelligent.
15I think this has more to do with business than religion. How many people are really going to go see this movie? There's plenty of good movies that don't get funding here because it's just not right for the American audience. It doesn't mean we're all religious zealots, it could just mean that it's not likely to make a lot of money, so why bother funding it?
16UnDave, on this I am sure, having taken "Logic" as one of my philosophy courses, and again with regards to wording when doing a statistical analysis. The premise can never be disproven, all that can be said in logic is that the premise has failed the test.
17I disagree. If there isn't a God, it can be proven by proving that God does not exist. I have also taken logic in conjunction with my degree in mathematics.
18Pink and Haus both have points. This might have nothing to do with religion or evolution. This film may just suck or be boring. They may think they can't find an audience for it.
If you look at the kind of stuff Hollywood pumps out every year, a film about a scientist questioning his faith, can't be ass offensive as some of the other stuff out there.
19Huh. It didn't censor my ass typo.
20Well logically sense you can't prove a negative, I can't prove you wrong.
21Again, you can prove a negative, otherwise you couldn't prove that the square root of 2 (or 3) exists. It's all good though.
22I don't know why it would be safe to assume the movie is a dog if it has found distributors around the world and the end of the article says early reviews have been raves.
23theres plenty of movies that get rave reviews but make no money - like 3/4ths of every year's Academy Awards nominations.
if i'm an investor i'm only looking to make money and i'm looking to do it on a safe bet since the economy sucks and i've probably lost money recently. Transformers 2 is a safe bet. This movie is not.
24
25The movie has found distributors worldwide and the U.S. is not the only country with a troubled economy.
26But for the film to not be able to find a distributor because they fear religious right backlash? When has Hollywood ever been afraid of religious right backlash?
Something about that just doesn't make sense to me. Every single US distributor is passing because they think this film will be "hugely divisive." But "Milk" wasn't divisive to the same people they are now worried about offending? Micheal Moore's movies aren't too divisive? Ben Stein's movie "Expelled" about intelligent design being taught in schools wasn't too divisive?
IDK I think we may not be getting the whole story about this film. I feel like this may just be the people who are trying to find US distributors way of challenging distributors into buying their film. I think this might just be some clever PR work. Start a controversy to get people interested, maybe?
27If the religious right were up in arms, and it was a "good" movie, distributors would be all over the place getting free publicity for the movie, on every news show, every talk show around the country. They put their add on You-tube knowing that every time the controversy was mentioned on TV, they would feature that you tube free to every audience. A publicity man's dream come true.
28Boring or not, I like me some Paul Bettany. And Jennifer Connolly. And since bio is my thing, I also like me some Darwin. Whether or not it sucks, I still wanna see it.
29I also sometimes think that maybe people just don't believe in evolution because they have no idea what it *really* is. That and they can't somehow find a way to reconcile their own religious beliefs with it. I've met people who do it, and what they believe makes sense to me. My high school biology teacher did it. I never questioned her as either a Christian or a scientist.
30"Something about that just doesn't make sense to me. Every single US distributor is passing because they think this film will be "hugely divisive." But "Milk" wasn't divisive to the same people they are now worried about offending? Micheal Moore's movies aren't too divisive? Ben Stein's movie "Expelled" about intelligent design being taught in schools wasn't too divisive?"
Good point, kas. I also don't really think the people in the movie are gonna exactly sell it. Paul Bettany isn't exactly Johnny Depp.
31It will probably be a straight to dvd release in the US.
Aren't most BBC movies released straight to dvd in the US anyway?
32Right and while Connelly is an Oscar nominated actress, the film industry has such a fickle "what have you done for me lately" mentality that her name alone isn't enough to sell a film either.
33"Aren't most BBC movies released straight to dvd in the US anyway?"
Not sure, kas, but if so, that would explain all of the British-y goodness missing from my daily entertainment quota.
34"the film industry has such a fickle "what have you done for me lately" mentality that her name alone isn't enough to sell a film either."
Right.
35We buy a lot of BBC productions at the library and they are almost all straight to DVD releases in the US.
Here is an imdb supplied list of BBC movies recently released. Only a handful have been released into US theaters.
http://www.imdb.com/company/co0103694/
36Ooh, thanks Kas! So many good movies on that list. I loved Starter for 10 and All the little animals.
37The list does have films on it that did pretty well in the US but they are films with box office names like Scarlett Johannsen and Leonardo DiCaprio. Then there are films like "The Duchess" that were released with Paramont while everybody was still in love with Keira Knightly from Pride and Prejudice and Atonement. Or films like "Ms Potter" who had US based production company Phoenix Pictures working with BBC.
38Why do I have a feeling that this is like The Passion of the Christ all over. A lot of influential groups denounced the movie long before it was released by different groups because of the perceived message that it would have and Mel had to eventually fund it himself with his own money to get it released and distributed.
America is a pretty religious country and as Haus said, and any smart investor who's looking to get his money's worth isn't really going to want to invest in a movie that would probably not break even, in terms of marketing, promotion, and distributing cost, especially considering the fact that movies with overtly anti-religious themes don't make much money.
39Right, Myst. I think this was a business based decision and not a fear based one.
40When Milk, Expelled, Brokeback Mountain etc. were released, there was a different party in power. There's been a striking shift in mood since then.
41But Steph those movies weren't focused on anything that had to deal with religion or talk about evolution or G.O.D. As much as an uproar people can have for gay-themed movie there's still a relatively big interest there. This is a movie that has to do with scientific theories and that automatically really puts it in a category for more Indie type films as it has a really small audience who'll be interested. The target audience is going to be relatively low, as anyone who's taken a science class in high school knows about Darwin and his theories so they're most likely are not going to really be interested in sitting through a movie about him. Where as movies such as Milk, Expelled or Brokeback Mountain actually do have a large target audience and touch upon a very hot issue that's going around in the US.
The fact that the movie's biggest leading cast member isn't exactly a movie goer draw and there isn't any real hype about the it, despite the rave reviews, isn't helping the fact, so most studios heads probably rather save themselves the headache and their money.
42Puleeze, "Inherit The Wind" is a classic made, what 50 years ago. What has changed, other then the great actors in that classic film are long gone..unfortunately.
43I don't know why, but perhaps, that some distributors may not think it's very marketable line and the actors aren't the very well-known to US audience? (I love Paul Bethany and J. Connelly but they're not exactly the 'lure the massive crowd in' Brad Pitt/George Clooney/Julia Roberts type)
A lot of great movies didn't make it to the theaters (or only limited release then off to the dvd shelves).
But I love the actors who are in this movie, and it also seems to be a really good movie (just read excerpts and opinions on it), in regards of the plot line (theme), I don't think it's that controversial...Even if they don't make it in movie theaters, I will most likely be renting the dvd. My hub would love to watch this movie (it'll be a fresh change from his gung-ho action movies or gory horrors).
44Actually, Myst, I was the one who first brought up those movie titles as examples of distribution companies not being afraid of a little controversy.
But you are right, there isn't much about this film that is going to be bringing in the box office dollars. Neither the subject matter nor the cast will pack those US theaters.
I think this is clever PR on the part of the BBC people. Create a little controversy around the film and people may want to see it. I don't think it will create enough interest though. I am still predicting a straight to dvd US release.
45Oh sorry kas
I was a little distracted by the VMAs and Kanye's
colossal a-hole move.
46It was a very distracting move.
47And yet movies starring Paris Hilton manage to be released into theaters....
48blue that's one of those mysteries that I'll never get.
49Guys, how about I see the movie and report back to you immediately after ? I know it WILL be released in France. I mean, it has to. We're the biggest atheist/church-hating/soshlist country in the world...
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