As you may have heard, the Creation movie about Charles Darwin’s life (starring Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly) is having trouble finding a distributor.
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.
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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.
Well, that’s embarrassing…
There’s one potential upside to this. A few years ago, I remember hearing about how Michael Moore had trouble distributing his movie Fahrenheit 9/11. When the movie was finally released, the story had become so huge and so many people were eager to see it, that it became the highest-grossing documentary movie of all time.
So maybe this harmless movie can ride the waves of fake controversy, find a distributor eager to capitalize on it as well, and it’ll do even better at the box office than it otherwise would.
(Thanks to everyone for the link!)