The Crash of Ben-Hur

Sword and sandal movies are not necessarily hits at the box office, but for some reason there was an attempt to bring a remake of Ben-Hur into theatres on a budget of $100 million.  While that does not seem like a lot of money for a blockbuster during the summer time, it is a number that far outweighed the interest of the movie, and was perhaps a mis-calculation of MGM and Paramount.  It is less of a hit by Paramount, who only put up twenty percent of the funding for the movie.

The budget is very similar to what Paramount put up in 2014 for Hercules, a movie starring Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, that brought in close to $250 million world wide.  If they had hopes that Ben-Hur would do similar numbers, they were vastly mistaken.  It lacked the sort of drawing star power that Hercules had, as well as aiming at a vastly different demographic, one that doesn't necessarily flood to theatres.

That demographic is the much sought after Christian market.  They were ripe for the plucking with Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, which made over $600 million on a budget of $30 million.  Ever since then, there have been attempts to harness the same sort of success, as studios have been trying to dole out biblical and faith based stories in hopes of seeing the green.

In 2014, there were a glut of films trying to break into that demographic.  We had big budget movies like Darren Aronofsky's Noah (which made $362 million world wide on a budget of $125), and fellow acclaimed director Ridley Scott's Exodus: Gods and Kings ($268 million on a $140 million budget).  The former was a success, although there was an intense battle between the film maker and the studios over the version that should be shown, as the executives were afraid that it would not penetrate the Christian market as hoped.  The director won, and the result was a film that fared well.

There were also a smattering of lower budget attempts that year.  The most profitable was God's Not Dead, which had a production budget of $2 million and made $62 million across the globe (the majority of that was from North America).  There was also Heaven is for Real.  It starred Greg Kennear and was directed by Randall Wallace.  It was able to barely break $100 million world wide on a budget of $12 million.  And, if I haven't mentioned enough already, there was the adaption of The Bible mini-series from the History Channel, which got repackaged into a horrible looking film called Son of God.  It made close to $60 million domestically on an unreported budget.

So, have any of these films that I mentioned seemed as though there was proof that a large budget film seeking the Christian audience would work?  Only one comes to mind, and that was Noah, the film made by a man considered by many to be an atheist, and a film that left a lot of the Christian audiences upset at liberties taken with the story, as imagery and symbolism were used to tell the spiritual aspects of the narrative.  Oddly enough, there wasn't the same kind of backlash from Exodus: Gods and Kings, which did everything it could to actually leave God out of the film.

Looking at the evidence from the box office, it is easy to understand that there is no such thing as the Golden Christian Egg, the movie that will get everyone out of their homes and into the theatres.  What happened with The Passion of the Christ was lightening in a bottle.  It tapped into culture, and those sorts of things, when re-attempted, can easily come off as forced.

The team behind Ben-Hur, most notably Mark Burnett and Roma Downey (the couple behind many faith based projects), were looking to bring a faith based element to the film in the hopes that it would get the audiences out.  They could have looked at the two previously mentioned blockbuster attempts to see that even with established and acclaimed directors and star studded casts it is hit or miss.  Ben-Hur had neither of those things, unless you consider the director of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter a recognizable and acclaimed name.

There was little happening for this movie that was going to make it stand out.  It had to rely on the merits of the original in its marketing.  The target demographic never even saw the faith based elements in the trailers.  Perhaps that was a big miss.  In the end, the movie ended up servicing a much older audience than was possibly intended (95% of the movie goers were over the age of 25), and disappointed on critical and financial levels.  It may come as a surprise to MGM and Paramount, but, from the lessons of history, it was actually very easy to predict.