The megachurch leader and producer is in a joint venture with Joe Roth to bring a best-seller about a boy and heaven to the big screen as he cashes in (critics say too much) on Christianity.
A woman is crying. She’s African-American, 40 years old and in anguish as she describes her son’s death from exposure to the cold, the result of her own negligence when under the influence of alcohol. She’s so distraught, it’s painful to watch.
“I had been drinking, and I blacked out,” she says, blinking back tears. “Then, next morning, my alarm went off. I went to look for Christian Micah to get him out of his bed, and he wasn’t there, and in a panic [I was] just going around the house, yelling his name. He was in the car. And I was just like, ‘Oh my God! Christian!’ I grabbed him to get him out of the car, and he was kind of still, and I saw death in the eyes of my child! And I grabbed him, screaming, almost like a wailing. What kind of mother would have done this? I wanted to die. I wanted to die.”
Her face fills a massive screen high above a vast, modern auditorium, where hundreds of men and women watch, rapt. Waves of emotion course through them and only increase when the woman, LaHeather Wilson, steps forward to cheers and applause, dressed in flowing green robes and a mortarboard, engulfed by 90 other men and women, also in green.
These are the graduates of TORI (the Texas Offenders Reentry Initiative), a church-based program that helps former inmates adjust to the outside world, and they’re here to receive their diplomas at The Potter’s House, a 191,000-square-foot, evangelical megachurch in Dallas, on this last Sunday in March.
TORI is the creation of Bishop T.D. Jakes, the 56-year-old founder of Potter’s House and a towering figure in the evangelical world who in 2001 was the subject of a Time cover that asked, “Is This Man the Next Billy Graham?” He’s a 6-foot-3, 250-pound giant whose low, rumbling voice only adds to his gravitas.
Jakes has a handful of movies under his belt and a Grammy on the shelf. And today, 10 years after The Passion of the Christ resurrected the religious movie, he finds himself at the crossroads of faith and Hollywood. He’s in the business of saving souls; why not save Hollywood while he’s at it?
It has been a decade since Jakes first dipped his toes into the film world as a producer of Woman Thou Art Loosed, then followed it with movies including 2011’s Winnie Mandela, 2012’s Sparkle and 2013’s Black Nativity. Now he is increasing his presence in film and television, not the least through a joint venture with one of Hollywood’s biggest names, Joe Roth.
Jakes and Roth, the former Fox and Disney executive who most recently produced Alice in Wonderland, teamed to bring the global best-seller Heaven Is for Real to the screen, and Sony will release it April 16 on 2,500 screens. The film is based on Todd Burpo’s 2010 account of his 4-year-old son’s near-death experience.
Jakes met Burpo, also a pastor, just after the book was published, when Burpo introduced himself at a conference where Jakes was speaking. “He came to the front and told me about his son and his story and the book, which I had not read,” recalls Jakes. “He asked me to read it and be a part of it.”
Roth had bought the rights to the book six weeks prior to its publication, before anyone imagined it would go on to sell more than 10 million copies. He then took it to Sony, which has a first-look deal with Jakes’ production company. The studio agreed to greenlight the film if it could be made for less than $15 million, and introduced Roth to Jakes.
“I was impressed by what a humble, modest, yet charismatic guy he was,” says Roth, who notes that the movie was shot in Canada last summer with Randall Wallace (Secretariat) directing. “There are no accidents. He didn’t stumble into success.”
Sony’s decision to pair Roth with Jakes shows how much it values the pastor’s ability to boost the bottom line of faith-based films. It also indicates the growing importance of such material: Paramount’s Noah debuted better than expected with $43.7 million, while the low-cost Son of God has grossed an impressive $58.5 million since its Feb. 28 opening, and God’s Not Dead has earned $32.6 million. (Jakes has not yet seen Noah, but says he is “excited” to do so.)
And more will be coming, if Jakes has his way. He already is moving forward with new TV and film projects, including directing vehicles for Angela Bassett and Regina King; a TV movie about Antoinette Tuff (the Georgia woman who talked down a school gunman by telling him she loved him) for Sony; and a BET celebration of the 35th anniversary of his ministry. Both he and Roth believe this is a huge untapped market — one that can be reached by Jakes’ 4 million social media followers, but that has to be given the right material. “I want to continue in the film space, independent as well as through Sony and others,” Jakes says. “I want to find unique stories, smart stories that are impactful.”
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SOURCE: The Hollywood Reporter
Stephen Galloway
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