Filed under: popular demand
I love the way people keep underestimating Gibson‘s The Passion.
It wouldn’t take much to note that we haven’t had a major worldwide passion play for a long time, that such plays have always been a source of public reflection, entertainment, and discussion, and that this taps into wellsprings which somehow people have skirted in modern media. [considering how many little passion plays are put on with great regularity across Europe, you’d think there would at least be more mainstream novellas and cartoons and indy theatre performances of variations on this theme across this country and the Christian world.]
Now that it’s clear this will be Gibson’s most famous and successful endeavour, and that it is already a massive success, people could acknowledge that it will become an instant classic, and be similarly successful on a 6-month timescale and after it goes to video. so I would think. But the current projections (it’s already passed $200M in gross in 2 weekends) are merely that it will “eventually gross over $300M”. Excuse me? Say what? Eventually as in “by April”, right? I have no doubt that this will eventually top $1B in worldwide sales. Not only has there been nothing like it for decades, there is nothing like it in the works — even if other filmmakers change their tune and start trying to follow in its footsteps, it will take many years for that to happen.
My prediction, based on how funding for this movie worked out: Gibson ends up on the Forbes “billionnaires of the world” list within 5 years. Let’s hear it for putting your money where your dreams are.
And, for the record, I haven’t seen it yet and have no idea whether it could reasonably be considered “anti-Semitic”, but I doubt it was conceived or will be remembered that way.