Micheal Flaherty is the president of a movie studio that manages budgets in excess of $100 million. He’s also a Christian. If you think that this might make him the target of a lot of suspicion, you’d be right. Any time big money and religion get mixed, B.S. radars start working overtime. Mine included, alas!
But Flaherty is pretty open about the purpose of Walden Media. He recently told Christianity Today that he and Cary Granat started the company “to find a way to make more great, inspiring films that can lift people up and encourage them.” Because they realized that the “media really does have a role in influencing hearts and minds,” they decided, “rather than just to curse the darkness, to light a few candles and get more great films out there.”
“We try to be a voice for parents, teachers, pastors, youth leaders, librarians – people who work actively with kids,” Flaherty said. “We find out what stories really get these kids motivated to love reading.” So his number one agenda is not, as many liberal skeptics might think, spreading the message of Christianity. It’s also not, as many conservatives suspect, pandering to Hollywood. It’s not even, to be perfectly honest, making “art.”
“We’re trying to build a brand for Walden as something that parents, pastors, teachers and librarians are really comfortable with. So if they see our logo on a movie poster, they’ll know that they’re going to get a certain experience.”
That “certain experience” is familiar to anyone who’s seen one of Walden’s better films: Holes, Because of Winn-Dixie, or The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The movies convey a sense that Walden’s production teams really paid attention to the books upon which they were based; that the filmmakers actually liked the books; and that they know how to show an audience a good time. For better or worse, Walden’s films also lack a certain spark, the kind that elevates a film to the level of a cinematic classic.
And that’s probably as it should be, given that Flaherty’s objective is not to inspire the next generation of filmmakers.
[More at Hollywood Jesus]
[Interview at Christianity Today Movies]
