I don’t remember the Brethren “vigorously marketing the Church under the Mormon name” — unless that is your snide characterization of what they were actually doing.
http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/717 ... 1209896052
Meet the Mormons Now 37th of All Documentaries
Contributed By R. Scott Lloyd, Church News staff writer
24 OCTOBER 2014
The success of Meet the Mormons, the Church’s first venture into showing a motion picture in commercial theaters, has exceeded all expectations. After just 10 days, it ranks as the 37th most successful documentary ever.
The movie premiered October 7 at a theater in Sandy, Utah, and was released October 10 at 317 theaters in 45 states, becoming the number 1 film in 100 of them. In its first week, the film finished as the 10th highest grossing film in the nation and one of the top 100 documentaries of all time.
The number of screens showing the film expanded to 333 on October 17, with more planned. That’s more than twice as many screens as initially planned, but the demand had already increased, driven by word of mouth and social media. It is anticipated the movie will eventually be shown internationally, as well as in visitors’ centers and at the Legacy Theater in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in Salt Lake City.
It was initially planned for exclusive showing there, but filmmakers and Church leaders began to think big at the urging of an outside firm.
“As we first started talking about a release in commercial theaters, even I was shocked,” director Blair Treu admitted. “But as we’ve watched the audiences respond in previews, I’m not fearful now; I’m pretty calm.”
It was Brother Treu who, in a brainstorming meeting to discuss making a new film for the Legacy Theater, suggested the idea of the documentary. “My hand shot up. I said, ‘Let’s show the world who we are, mostly through the perspective of our members, rather than through the details of our beliefs.’”
It stemmed from a longing he’d had as a youth growing up in the Church. “I thought, ‘If people just knew us, they wouldn’t say such terrible things about us. Their perspective of who we are would change if they just knew us better.’”
Brother Treu pitched the idea to Church leaders, who sent him out to make an advance trailer, filming prototypical interviews in Europe, Asia, South America, and the United States.
“We showed it to President Thomas S. Monson,” Brother Treu recounted. “He said, ‘I love it; go do it.’”
It was the Church President, in fact, who named the film, reusing a title that was given to a film he was involved with as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles back in the early 1970s, one that was used extensively in missionary work with a similar concept but not nearly on the scale of this one.
https://www.LDS.org/church/news/meet-th ... s?lang=eng
Having embarked on a bold new venture with the theatrical release of its new motion picture “Meet the Mormons,” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will find out beginning Friday if its hopes come true.
The movie opens at some 300 theaters in 45 states. That’s twice as many screens as initially planned, but demand has already increased, driven by word-of-mouth and social media. Organizers hope for an eventual international roll-out
Originally anticipated for exclusive showing at the church’s Legacy Theater in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in Salt Lake City, filmmakers and church leaders began to think big at the urging of an outside firm.
https://www.deseretnews.com/article/865 ... hotos.html
Poor Scott.
