Gibson's Price for 'Passion': $50 Million

February 16, 2004
By Roger Friedman

Mel Gibson couldn't find anyone to make "The Passion of the Christ," so he put up $25 million of his own money to produce it.

He couldn't find a major distributor for it, either, and was forced to accept an offer from little but scrappy Newmarket Films. Now I'm told that Newmarket is putting all marketing and distribution costs on Gibson. The price tag just for that: nearly another $25 million.

That would make Gibson's personal liability on "The Passion" roughly $50 million. That's a lot of money to prove a point. It's $40 million more than Rosie O'Donnell spent on her musical, "Taboo." "The Passion" is now the most expensive vanity production in history.

Meantime, since Friday morning's column regarding distribution of "The Passion," Newmarket Films tells me it's added a couple of theaters — namely AMC Century City on the Beverly Hills/West Los Angeles border, and the AMC theater on West 84th Street and Broadway in Manhattan and the Clearview Chelsea on West 23rd Street.

This still means, especially in Manhattan, that the film is pitched away from an upscale demographic, and instead toward one that is less well off economically. For a major release not to be in the Ziegfeld or in the Sony Lincoln Plaza on the West Side means that Newmarket and Gibson are making quite a statement about how they think this film will be received.

The theaters they have chosen in Jewish areas are minimal — none, for example, on Long Island near Valley Stream and the Five Towns or Great Neck and Roslyn — but screens in more friendly places like Merrick, Lynbrook and Seaforth. The same can be said for areas surrounding Beverly Hills or downtown Chicago. It's interesting, as a matter of fact, that Newmarket and Gibson are largely booked into single theaters in multiplexes that are part of malls and not in stand-alone prestige theaters. They seem to be gambling on a wider, commercial audience and not an upscale, more discerning one.

As for Manhattan, any film booker will tell you that the multiplex at 84th Street and Broadway is considered to have an "urban" and lower-income demographic than the prestigious Sony complex at 68th Street and Broadway. They have booked "The Passion of the Christ" at the Metro on Broadway and West 100th Street — a grimy two-screen house used for second runs and considered a throwaway by distributors. Ironically, it stares at two Orthodox synagogues that reside within a block. It will be interesting to see how the movie plays in that neighborhood.

As I said on Friday, I think everyone should see this film in order to be able to judge it properly. How people will react to "The Passion of the Christ" will determine a lot of things, not the least of which will be how Gibson's career is viewed in the future.

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