Producer: Darwin Film Can't Find US Distributor Because Of Controversial Evolution

Telegraph:

Jeremy Thomas, the Oscar-winning producer of Creation, said he was astonished that such attitudes exist 150 years after On The Origin of Species was published.

"That's what we're up against. In 2009. It's amazing," he said.

"The film has no distributor in America. It has got a deal everywhere else in the world but in the US, and it's because of what the film is about. People have been saying this is the best film they've seen all year, yet nobody in the US has picked it up.

Read the whole story: Telegraph

Comments

[noaxe397]

Why don't the producers release it as a science fiction movie? Religious crackpots seem to have no trouble with highly adapted blood drenched Mel Gibson gore-fests (Braveheart, The Patriot, Passion of the Christ.) Why say it is science fiction and not a historical interpretation? Christians have no problem going to see movies that have heavy science themes including ones that show cloning, time travel, planet formation, intergallactic life forms, etc. They don't boycott them because they are sold as fantasy.

[bolmah]

You are letting your religious bias get the best if you. If you read further into the story it is only one religious website that is complaining and they have a right, but one website does not control the distribution of movies here in the United States. This is just a bunch of crap that brings out the "Christians are crazy" crazy crowd to bash Christians. Trust me they will find a distributor for their film.

[yankees]

Maybe the film, not the subject matter, is just crap

[bolmah]

For those who could call bullsh*t to this story good for you. I can not believe that one website that claims to be Christian can stop the distribution of one film. This is a ploy to generate buzz for a movie that is probaly boring and not that thought provoking. i read the life of Charles Darwin. He had those thoughts way before the death of his daughter. This is a ploy to bash Christians and their belief. now when did believing in the existense of God ever stop anyone form watching a film they really wanted to watch? This story is bullsh*t and this may give all of those "we love to bash Christians" people an outlet.

[noaxe397]

Yes, they can. And with almost no effort, so frail is capitalism in this country.

Example: About 10 years ago CBS was to air a movie about Ron and Nancy reagan. Mr. Barbara Streisand (James Brolin) was to play Reagan and conservatives went ballistic because they were afraid their "god" was going to be portrayed in the liberal media as a crackpot. Heaven forbid.

About six Reagan loyalists started an internet campaign (just 6 frigin' people) to boycott the sponsers and CBS dropped plans to air the movie.

It was shown on Showtime (owned by CBS's parent company.) I watched it. It was in no way disrespectful to the Reagans, broke no new ground, offered no new interpretations other than what was widely reported in the press, and did accurately reflect their love for eachother.

It was so well done the actress who played Nancy (Judy Davis, no relation,) was nominated for, but did not win, an emmy.

Yes they can.

[bolmah]

So they can stop the distribution of a film about the father of Evolution, but they totally can't stop the Saw films, Scream films, Date Movie, Dance Flick and all of the South Park cartoons. It is still b.s. There are sooo many distributors that they can go to to have this film here. Look what happened to Michael Moore Farinheight 9/11 when other distributors decided against it and the Mel Gibson when it came to his Passion of the Christ film. They will find a distributor, they just want to cause a buzz and start the age old debate of Religion and Evolution and according to these posts, everyone fell for it.

[AtheistUS]

"now when did believing in the existence of God ever stop anyone form watching a film they really wanted to watch" - I do know families that do not watch Harry Potter movies (and don't let their kids) for exactly this reason.

About this specific movie about Darwin I can't say, have not watch it yet.

I think there may be other reasons for this movie to go widely anywhere except US. For once, large part of US audience has not much tolerance for other cultures, short attention span, and does not often accepts foreign movies. For example, it is sure more common in other developed countries to watch a movie with subtitles or even dubbed than in US. Topics that are too far from common pop-culture settings (police, bank robbery, rich crook, mad scientist, athlete etc) usually does not go too well here. If culture settings are different and movie is too intellectual, it is a suspect for potentially low audience.

[nopilikia]

What should scare you more is these morons control the media.

[Macready]

oh it does . . . it looks like a great film . . . see video report on Darwin that was on Channel 4 News (UK) last night.

http://www.channel4.com/news/

[scottyknows]

Stalin, Lenin and Hitler were all atheists, and "reasoned" that once religion was removed from society--i.e., that which elevates life above mere existence--then morality becomes subjective and Survival of the Fittest is the new morality. Why not blonde, blue-eyed ruling the planet if were are simply here by happenstance and our fate is oblivion?

Darwin, perhaps unintentionally, gave sway to that argument and the philosophies of these men which led to the greatest amount of killing in the history of the planet. All in the name of an unproven theory.

I wonder if the movie touches on that.

[nopilikia]

Not really. Next to the Black Death, the Crusades caused the greatest amount of death (by percent) of mankind  over the almost three hundred years it lasted. But then, that was one religion fighting another. Bet, a movie on the evolution of that would have trouble to.

[thundermummy]

Hitler wasn't an atheist m0ron, he was Catholic. Not that he should be an example of what's wrong with Catholicism (the church does that on its own). Social Darwinism has nothing to do with evolution. As for the unproven theory, you must not know how science works but I'm sure then that you must take a lot of things on faith. Like how Jeebus keeps the fly fly in the air on your way to grandma's.

[AtheistUS]

Hollywood movies? Or trashy web sites?

Darwin lived way before Lenin (and two other villains you picked) and was a naturalist, one of founders of whole branch of science, evolutionary biology.

What is "unproven theory"? Some religious myth? - wrong, it is not a theory: no prediction power, does not relate different observations, cannot be verified.

Lenin and Stalin did not "reason" that "once religion was removed from society then morality ... becomes subjective and Survival of the Fittest is the new morality". Can you give source of this claim? To my knowledge this is lie.

Lenin and to less extend Stalin claimed to be atheists, but they created system of blind beliefs that had very much in common with religion. Main myths were not supposed to be subject to verifications or critique, and people of this new religion were very offended by any hint of doubt (reminds you something?)

Hitler was not an atheist.

By "the greatest amount of killing in the history of the planet" you probably mean hunger and repressions in former USSR, holocaust and WWII. You wrongly link this to atheism or to scientists that realized and proved that life on Earth evolved and is evolving.

By proportion to population largest amount of death was brought probably by European colonization of Americas, or by European religious wars in 16th century.

[AtheistUS]

(continuing my "pending" comment)
"religion... elevates life above mere existence" - but so are many other endeavors, especially thought and science. The question is: where religion leads poor souls? I like words of Steven Weinberg: "Good people do good things, bad people do bad things, but it takes a religion to make good people do bad things."

[davism97]

Some atheists respect human rights, others don't. Some Christians respect human rights, others don't. I don't care what you call yourself, as long as you respect and champion human rights you and I are on the same side.

[GrtPyrmd]

If there is evolution of life on the planet, then there was no garden and no adam and eve, no fall, no need for a savior... the whole tax-deductible house of cards tumbles...

[MadJeffersonian]

Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.
- Calvin (Calvin and Hobbes)

[thundermummy]

And no need for the sham artist on Sunday morning tv and on the radio.

[understandtheissues]

Of course evolution is false and the people who believe this also don't believe that the holocaust happened. It's the same warped mentality as Ahmadenijad in Iran. That is what the right wing conversative party believes, no evolution, no holocaust, white race is superior, etc. etc. etc.

[Ergon]

Wow, and now who sounds like a crackpot, hmmm?

[escribacat]

Oh, gawd ... is that embarrassing or what?

[RJPasadena]

This country is so backwards!

[calsedi]

There is no way that I see where Religion and Science can have a meaningful debate. They do not speak the same language. A mystical and mythological belief system vs. the Scientific Method... how is that debate ever going to happen??

What I see happening is that Creationist believers will still have their sickness' treated by drugs invented using the scientific data and methods they scoff at. These believers will still need geologists, who say the earth is 4.6 billion years old, to help protect them from natural disasters.

[AMaitrejean]

Although he was an atheist, I like this quote from Einstein:

"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."

It is a difficult debate, but not impossible. One cannot take the bible literally. I do not believe that the entire earth's population sprang from just 2 people. Science does not support this. I do believe in evolution. But, if "Adam" were the first man God created in his image...what would his image be? The figure of a man? I do not believe that God is a physical being...but spiritual. One could mesh science and religion by theorizing that God made "Adam" in his "image" by giving him a soul.

While you cannot prove the existance of a soul through science, this is where the religion part kicks in....you simply have faith.

If both those who firmly believe in science only and those who firmly believe in religion only, would simply OPEN THEIR minds, some very interesting debates could occur. A closed mind will never learn ANYTHING new.

[thundermummy]

My mind is open but I don't take things on "faith" so what can religion do for me?

[AtheistUS]

Einstein made such remarks for people who generally understood that he may refer to beauty of nature as 'God' etc. This is just a play of words. Religion does not help to explain or understand anything. At very best it is renaming of something that we do not know (at the moment) into something that we still do not know.

Your expression "those who firmly believe in religion only" sounds normal and makes sense. But your expression "those who firmly believe in science only" sounds strange, unnatural.

[marijam]

I simply don't believe it, not when stuff like Texas Chainsaw Massacre 27 and SAW 50 can find a distributor.

[Tlanice]

LMAO you've been faved

[Ergon]

BUt what's still missing is the part where I said it was Hollywood Hype. Now cut it out! I'm a friend of the producer!

[Ergon]

Ooh, NOW we're not being deleted in real time.

[Ergon]

It'll be another A Beautiful Mind.

[Ergon]

But I also said I would love to see the movie http://www.mahalo.com/creation it seems like a really good one. Not just how The Origin of the Species was written but also the conflict between Darwin and his religious wife.
I think it'll be

[AtheistUS]

Women are usually more religious than men. Mark Twain's wife also hold him a bit from being too clear about religion.