“Mark and Bev Tindall” <> wrote in message news:<>…

LOS ANGELES, May 5 – In a darkened screening room where movie-altering

decisions are made, the newly minted Christian audience is under consideration by Hollywood experts. MGM is holding one of a series of screenings of “Saved!,” a small, irreverent comedy, set to open on May

28, about an evangelical Christian high school. But the movie is proving difficult to market. Though Hollywood is eager to capitalize on the Christian audience that emerged in huge numbers to see “The Passion of the Christ,” movie executives are unsure about what kinds of movies will appeal to it. Does “Saved!” fit the bill?

In “Saved!,” Mandy Moore and Macaulay Culkin (in a wheelchair) are siblings attending the school, a Midwestern institution where “Jesus loves you” is a mantra – and an order. A giant cutout of Jesus looms over the campus. Pastor Skip, played by Martin Donovan, is the spiritual leader of the school, handsome, hip and given to complimenting his students on being “phat.”

Jena Malone plays a teenager who becomes pregnant while trying to cure

her boyfriend of his homosexuality and save him from damnation. Her mother, a divorcée played by Mary-Louise Parker, is trying to be right

with God but has an affair with Pastor Skip.

The movie is complicated, and its message open to interpretation. No one at MGM seems certain of how it will be received.

“I love this movie, but it is so hard to figure out who the audience is,” said Peter Adee, president of worldwide marketing at MGM. “It has

a certain Christian appeal, but it’s also a little irreverent. It has a pure Christian message in the middle, which is tolerant. But on its surface, if you say it’s a Christian movie, a lot of people will go, `I’m out.’ And religious people will say, `I’m out, because it seems like they’re making fun.’ “

So MGM executives have been trying what they call the “Hail Mary” approach, throwing every possible hook into the advertising and publicity for the film, working especially hard to reach the Christian

audience that turned out for “The Passion of the Christ.”