The Omega Code on top-10 film list
The Omega Code, October 20, 1999
Moviegoers turned out in droves over the weekend for The Omega Code, pushing the Christian suspense thriller into 10th place on the box-office leaders list.
The $7-million film, which stars Michael York, Casper Van Dien, and Catherine Oxenberg, grossed $2.4 million in its opening, an average of $7,745 per screen, the highest of the Top 10 movies.
The film is an effort of the Trinity Broadcasting Network to provide an alternative to Hollywood’s standard on-screen fare. TBN founder Paul Crouch and his son Matt produced the film, which features an apocalyptic plot, lots of explosions, and prophets who quote Scripture.
Omega‘s success caught mainstream Hollywood unaware. The ticket sales were “David beats Goliath,” said Gitesh Pandya, editor of the Box Office Guru Web site. “They’re really almost beating the studios at their own game.”
But the Christian community anticipated Omega’s release. Some 2,000 volunteers plastered posters around the country, contacted church youth groups, and encouraged non-Christian friends to attend. TBN also regularly has touted the film to its 70 million viewers, encouraging them to buy advance tickets or download posters and tracts from the TBN website.
The PR paid off. Pastors in Dallas, Atlanta, and Portland, Ore., each bought 1,000 advance movie tickets to distribute to their congregations. An Oklahoma CEO purchased 1,000 tickets for his employees. A Los Angeles woman gave out 1,600 tickets to youth groups, who arrived by the busload. Others who bought smaller blocks of tickets told TBN they would give them to friends who are not Christians in hopes of evangelizing them.
The biblical-theme movie “is what mainstream America wants,” Michael Harpster, marketing chief for Providence Entertainment, the movie’s distributor, told USA Today. “How many people go to church every week? A whole lot more than go to the movies,” he said. The Omega Code will expand from 300 theaters to 400 by early November.