Holy Rollers

This weekend in America, The Omega Code opened at number 10 in the box office charts, with a very respectable $2.3 million - all the more impressive when you consider that the movie cost just $10 million to make. But what really made this low budget film's success so surprising is that it had received next to no publicity before it opened. On the face of it, The Omega Code had a lot going for it - a comely leading man (Casper Van Dien), a strong cast including Michael York and Michael Ironside, and an of-the-moment plot featuring the end of the world. But what distinguished it from all the other apocalyptic films was that it was financed by America's evangelical movement - in particular the Trinity Broadcasting Network [TBN]- America's biggest religious television network. Church-goers who frequent the network's website were encouraged to download posters and publicity packs and help publicise the film's opening in their churches and communities. Perhaps some of the major film studios might like to take a leaf out of TBN's book - the campaign scored a huge success in one town with more advance ticket bookings than any other film except The Phantom Menace.