Faith & inspiration on center stage: the 16th Annual Movieguide[R] Faith & Values Awards.(CULTURE)

On the evening of February 12, most of Hollywood and the Big Media were abuzz with news of the just-ended screenwriters strike and the upcoming 80th annual Academy Awards. But at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, the buzz was about a very different--and increasingly important--film awards event: the 16th Annual Movieguide Faith & Values Awards Gala sponsored by the Christian Film & Television Commission.

The stars coming down the red carpet may not have constituted Tinsel Town's A-list of actors and actresses. However, as in years past, the Awards Gala featured a respectable lineup of movie veterans and upcoming stars and starlets, as well as executives from the major studios. While still a ways off from a full spiritual conversion, Hollywood is getting the bottom-line message that audiences want uplifting, faith-friendly, family-friendly movies. Dr. Ted Baehr, founder of the Christian Film & Television Commission and Movieguide, a family guide to movies, powerfully drove that message home with his Annual Report to the Entertainment Industry, in conjunction with the Awards Gala.

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The report cites a new five-year study by Movieguide of the top 250 movies at the box office, showing that movies with very strong Christian worldviews earn the most money. Although many of Hollywood's hedonist elite seem to be perpetually obsessed with producing films that glorify the crude, lewd, and nude, their self indulgence is being punished at the box office. "Sex, nudity, obscenity, and profanity don't really sell that well, especially in extreme forms," Dr. Baehr notes, "but movies with very strong Christian worldviews do three to 11 times better than movies with sex, nudity, and foul language. They also perform much better than movies with very strong non-Christian, immoral, false, or even anti-Christian worldviews."

"Moviegoers want to see movies with very strong Christian content," says Baehr. "They want the Savior to overcome the darkness, truth to triumph over falsehood, justice to defeat injustice, and beauty to overcome ugliness: they want the Good News of Jesus Christ." The box office bottom line bears this out, with audiences in recent years richly rewarding the makers of films such as The Passion of the Christ; The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe; The Lord of the Rings and the Spider-Man trilogies; the Shrek and the Pirates of the Caribbean series; and others.

The 2007 cash register bling-bling winners also featured wholesome and faith-friendly fare, such as Ratatouille, Enchanted, Spider-Man 3, I Am Legend, The Great Debaters, Transformers, Live Free or Die Hard, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and Shrek the Third.

As past Oscar, Emmy, and Golden Globe Award winner Louis Gossett, Jr. told THE NEW AMERICAN at the Movieguide Awards, "Hollywood is getting the picture that it's profitable to make films that Christians want to see. This is a trend that I am very happy to see."