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Left Behind, the bestselling Christian book series ever with 5 million copies in print, is making its way to the big screen. Production has begun in Toronto for the movie version of the first end-times installment by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins.The promoters of Left Behind hope that the Christian feature film is poised to cross over into mainstream culture.The Y2K scare may have come and gone. But the time is right for the Tribulation Force's movie debut, as end-times Christian films, books, audiotapes, videos, posters, and T-shirts continue to amass sales records, even crossing into mainstream markets. The Indwelling, the latest in the 12-book Left Behind series, was the top seller in early June in rankings by USA Today, amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, and The New York Times.Toronto–based Cloud Ten Pictures, run by Canadian brothers Peter and Paul Lalonde, is financing the $20 million production, the most expensive evangelistic movie in history, out of the hefty profits from three previous end-times productions: Apocalypse, Tribulation, and Revelation. The film's release is set for November 2000 (video) and February 2001 (wide screen). Anchor stars for the film include Kirk Cameron (best known as the teenage heartthrob from television's Growing Pains) as Buck, the skeptical TV reporter who becomes a born-again believer. Clarence Gilyard (Walker, Texas Ranger; Matlock) plays Bruce Barnes, the pastor who is left behind. The two actors, both Christians, share an explicit evangelical commitment to the project.

Peter Lalonde, executive producer of Left Behind, says his studio's success comes from a combination of new technology, a new strategy, a new attitude among Christian filmmakers, and Hollywood's biggest mistake.Lalonde says the Internet has erased the difference between big and small companies by leveling the cost of high-quality marketing communications."It allows us to play at any level we have the vision for," Lalonde says. "If you go to our Web site, it looks exactly like a Paramount or Disney site."Lalonde's strategy also includes making the movie in Toronto. But tax and currency benefits are only half the story. Lalonde is concerned about Hollywood interference, so his head office is in Canada, too."[Hollywood's] rules and strategies will not work for us," he says. "For Christian film to take the quantum leap it needs, we have to do things very differently." For Lalonde, this means creating movies that infiltrate culture as tools for evangelism."Movies are the single most powerful way our culture and values are passed along in the society at large," he says, and if Christians are not in the big leagues, they cannot affect mainstream values.But Lalonde is also keen on high production values: "It can't be a thinly disguised sermon. It has to be a story about real people. Much prejudice against Christian productions within Hollywood was not because of content. We didn't do things at the level of excellence."Lalonde became a believer in his 20s in a church that banned moviegoing. "We got caught in a trap," he says. "We thought Hollywood was so bad [that] we should retreat and point out all its shortcomings. We failed to offer viable alternatives."Times have changed. Cloud Ten Pictures will rely heavily on the TV ministries of Jack Van Impe, John Hagee, and T. D. Jakes to market the movie on video, guaranteeing a market share before the film ever opens in a theater.And Hollywood executives' biggest mistake? "They've lost Middle America," Lalonde says. "To enthuse 14-year-old boys, they make movies the mainstream can no longer relate to."Lalonde scoffs at merely inoffensive Hollywood "family values" movies as irrelevant. "A hundred million people out there have looked in the mirror and asked, 'What do you believe?' We tap into the millions Hollywood missed."

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July 10 2000, Vol. 44, No. 8