Phillip Wuntch
THE PASSION : COME SEE IT
Fri Jan 16 15:33:06 2004
68.92.176.189

For donor, Gibson film evolves into 'Passion'
Movie supporter buys thousands of tickets for Plano megaplex opening


11:07 PM CST on Thursday, January 15, 2004

By PHILIP WUNTCH / The Dallas Morning News


The same movie on 20 screens in the same megaplex on the same morning?

Sounds like a miracle, but it'll be reality next month at a Plano theater, when Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ finally makes its circuitous way to the big screen.

The controversial film, to be released Feb. 25 at about 2,000 theaters nationwide, will screen that morning in every auditorium at the Cinemark Tinseltown. Arch Bonnema, a member of Prestonwood Baptist Church who owns the firm Joshua Financial, bought out the theater for the morning, which is Ash Wednesday.

"We will have staggered showings every half-hour from 6:30 a.m. to 9 a.m.," Mr. Bonnema said. "That way, we won't have something like 6,000 people all entering at the same time."

The movie, a gritty telling of Jesus' last days directed by Mr. Gibson and starring James Caviezel in the title role, has had a rocky road to release.

Major studios steered clear of the project after some Jewish groups decried the script as anti-Semitic. Since then, Mr. Gibson has arranged private screenings around the world, worked out a distribution deal with Newmarket Films and received endorsements from Christians – from the pope to Billy Graham.

So how much did Mr. Bonnema pay for the morning at the multiplex?

He won't say, but 6,000 tickets at about $7 each would exceed $40,000. He'll donate half his tickets to the Prestonwood Baptist congregation and the rest to theology students, Bible study groups and others.

He saw The Passion at a private screening three weeks ago in Dallas.

"When Paul Harvey saw the movie, he said that only his marriage and the birth of his children had had a similar impact on him," Mr. Bonnema said. "I feel the exact same way."

Newmarket Films and Mr. Gibson have created an unprecedented campaign being fed in part by Internet sites that urge churches to coordinate their sermons with the movie's release.

A Cinemark spokesman said churches have bought large blocks of tickets across the country, and Newmarket announced this week that the film will open in wide release.

The R-rated film, which reportedly includes a gory depiction of the Crucifixion, is in Latin and Aramaic with subtitles and once seemed destined for small, specialized audiences. But the 2,000-screen debut qualifies it as a mainstream release.

"I knew it would start building and building," Bob Berney, Newmarket's president and a former co-owner of Dallas' Inwood Theatre, told The New York Times. "But now it's like a tsunami. We've had a flood of calls. People call and say, 'I want 10,000 tickets.' "

• Caught a typo... — scott alexander cowie, Sat Jan 17 01:56