Word the thing for Walden Media
FAITH & FAMILY: Company founded as launching pad for family films based on literary origins
By Wendy Wilson -- Video Business, 2/25/2008
FEB. 25 | Walden Media has a special gift for making family films that entertain audiences while delivering more substantive messages at the same time.
The Water Horse: The Legend of the Deep is based on a book.
Company co-founder and president Michael Flaherty says that Walden’s success in reaching beyond mainstream movie-goers to Christian viewers is no secret, just the product of simple outreach. Walden includes pastors among the parents, teachers and librarians the company talks to when developing film ideas, “even if it’s a faith-neutral project,” he says.
“One of the things that has been very interesting for us is this myth that if it doesn’t have John 3:16 on the one-sheet, [Christian audiences aren’t] interested, and that’s just not true,” Flaherty says. “They’re not looking for films that are explicitly made exclusively for the faith-based audience; they’re looking for good stories that celebrate the true, the good and the beautiful.”
Co-founded in 2001 by educator Flaherty and then-Dimension Films president Cary Granat, and funded by conservative Colorado billionaire Philip Anschutz, Walden was conceived as a launching pad for family films with rich literary origins. The company’s film adaptations of children’s classics include C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, due in theaters in May. Previous releases The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Disney) and E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web (Paramount) have translated into mainstream box-office success: the first of the Narnia chronicles, released in 2005, grossed $290 million; 2006’s Charlotte’s Web grossed $82 million. Walden’s take on select contemporary children’s fiction titles—Holes (Disney), Because of Winn-Dixie (20th Century Fox) and Bridge to Terabithia (Disney)—have been similarly well-received by younger audiences.
The next book-based DVD coming from Walden will be The Water Horse (Sony), due April 8. And Walden has a sister division, Bristol Bay, that makes films that appeal to older audiences, such as Amazing Grace (Fox).
Last year, Walden and Fox entered into a joint venture to market Walden films and select Fox titles. Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium (street March 4, prebook now) will be the first title released under the Fox Walden Films label on DVD.
Walden devotes the last 20 minutes of any presentation made about upcoming films to suggestions from the audience about which properties the company should develop next, Flaherty says. A public school teacher in Pennsylvania was the first person to suggest that Walden make a movie based on Holes. When the company dismissed her idea, she assigned her class a persuasive writing project to convince Walden to develop it.
“This [process] wasn’t birthed in a business school lab,” Flaherty says. “We fell into this strategy.”
Beyond theaters, Walden has demonstrated an ongoing commitment to deepening the connection between classrooms and the content it provides for the screen. The company’s publicity campaigns emphasize literacy whenever possible. A Charlotte’s Web-themed drive to set a Guinness World Record for the most people reading aloud together was tied into schools around the country.
Flaherty says that Walden’s mission to advance literacy has led the company to develop ongoing partnerships with the groups Reach Out & Read and First Book to help “get books out and into the hands of more children, especially those who can’t afford it.”
