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As chief operating officer of Promenade Pictures, Cindy Bond had high hopes for The Ten Commandments, the first in a projected 12-part series of computer-animated "Epic Stories of the Bible," when it opened in theatres last October. But the film failed to make much of a splash, opening well out of the Top 20 and grossing less than a million dollars—on a project that cost $11.6 million to make.

The movie released to DVD last week, and Bond spoke to CT Movies about what went wrong—and how things might be different with their next film, a comedy about Noah's Ark due sometime around Easter 2009.

The Ten Commandments didn't do very well at the box office. Is it fair to say it bombed?

Bond: I don't think that's the case at all. You know what "bomb" has to do with? It has to do with how much it costs to produce the movie, and then how much they make at the box office and then the DVD. I mean, comparing our budget to what we made at the box office and what we're going to make on DVD, this movie will profit. Very few movies can boast that. A movie starring Brad Pitt [The Assassination of Jesse James] opened about the same time we did, that was made for a budget in $30 million range, and they only made I think north of $3 million. [Actually, Jesse James earned $4 million at the box office, and almost another $11 million at the foreign box office for a total of $14.7 million. The Ten Commandments, meanwhile, only earned $42,000 overseas, according to Box Office Mojo.]

Also, we didn't have an enormous amount of money in our marketing campaign, and we didn't have a lot of time. We only had about three months to market the movie, and our big focus was the grassroots side of the campaign, through the churches, and it takes a long time. [When CT Movies interviewed Bond and Promenade CEO Frank Yablans last October, Yablans said the company had been "developing our material for 4½ years." Yablans also said some FoxFaith films had done poorly at the box office because "they had bad management" and that they "weren't supporting the films" with marketing and publicity—implying that Promenade was doing those things well. Yablans also said Promenade had a $120 million "war chest" for its projects.]

The good side is the people who did see the movie really liked it. We made the movie for moms, pops and kids, for families. We started off making it as a direct-to-video movie, and about half-way in we said, "It looks so great, let's work to go theatrical," and so that's what happened. And considering we were going to make a direct-to-DVD movie and ended up with what we did, I think we did a great job!

Cindy Bond

So was the theatrical release sort of like a commercial for the DVD?

Bond: Exactly. If we hadn't gone theatrical, we'd be starting from scratch with our DVD marketing, but it was absolutely one hundred percent a big commercial for the DVD release.

Did it do better than you expected? Worse?

Bond: It definitely did worse than I expected. I thought it would do better. But then, you know, looking at the marketing campaign having only three months, it's just … We absolutely did not have enough time. There were various individuals on our marketing team that were very concerned from the beginning, but there was a release schedule and we went with it. In hindsight, we would have held out and gone theatrical now.

I think people were talking about The Passion at least a year before it came out. That movie really had time to drum up the interest.

Bond: Yeah. And Bella is another good example; they were out there at least nine months to a year, and it was a very good movie. Ten Commandments was a very good movie. We just tried to pull off the impossible, we tried to pull it together in three months, and it just wasn't enough time.

Ten Commandments is a really good movie that we're very proud of. I know the movie's anointed. I've gotten so many letters of support, letters that have said they feel the movie is very anointed.

A scene from the film

There was also some controversy before the film came out, over the advertising.

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