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Coming Soon to a Church Near You
Hollywood Skips Movie Theaters With 3,200-Screen Opening

"Left Behind: World at War," the third movie based on the Left Behind series of novels about Armageddon and the Second Coming of Jesus, will open tonight on 3,200 screens across the country. But it will not be shown in a single commercial theater.

Although more than 70 million copies of the novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins have been sold, the previous two movies flopped at the box office. So, this time, Sony Pictures Entertainment is leaving the multiplexes behind. "World at War" will break out exclusively in churches.

Marketing executives say the decision is part of a major trend. The entertainment industry has discovered there is power, power, product-moving power in selling movies, books and music through churches -- particularly the suburban megachurches that draw thousands of well-heeled worshipers....

...The leading apostle of marketing through churches is the Rev. Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church, a much-emulated megachurch in Lake Forest, Calif. Since January 2003, he has sold 23 million copies of his book "The Purpose Driven Life" without any significant print, radio or television advertising, or even a conventional book tour.

He did it, he said, by creating "a whole new distribution channel," offering the book directly to ministers and congregations in bulk quantities, along with suggested sermons and study guides.

Although Warren calls his network of pastors "a stealth movement," his huge sales have registered on publishers' radar screens. "More than anything else, the success of Rick Warren's book has proved to a lot of marketing folks that tapping into churches is a profitable strategy," Thumma said....