Faith-based movie studio and distributor Angel Studios bet big on releasing a biopic about German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer last month, and more than a few things went wrong:

– There has been very intentional distancing between the director of the movie, Todd Komarnicki, and the author of the book many people associate with this film, Eric Metaxas.

– Bonhoeffer’s living relatives issued an open letter condemning the film’s historical inaccuracy and deliberately untruthful portrayal of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

– Eric Metaxas publicly called all of Bonhoeffer’s family members unhinged, Hamas-loving Jew-haters, based on, apparently, no evidence, and he constantly tied Bonhoeffer to his own political and theological inclinations.

– Bonhoeffer’s living relatives, descendants of people who gave their lives to protect the Jews and resist Hitler in WWII, are suing Metaxas for defamation.

– Scholars wrote articles to report that the portrayal of Bonhoeffer in this recent movie is inaccurate.

– Angel Studios chose to release Bonhoeffer on the same day as Wicked and Gladiator 2, and its second weekend was up against Disney’s Moana 2 during Thanksgiving week.

– Some critics say it was a bad movie.

But other than that, everything went great.

Gallows humor aside, this is a film that looks to have done less than $12 million at the box office as of last week, against a budget of $25 million, and an additional P&A budget of at least $5 million (and probably 4-5 times that). And keep in mind – Angel Studios doesn’t keep all of that $12 million either, as (at minimum) the theaters will take a sizeable chunk of the take. This comes at a time when Angel Studios is trying to go public, pitching a valuation of $2 billion – a rough sell for a company that has recently lost its association with hit TV series The Chosen and has thus far been unable to recreate the financial success of Sound of Freedom – a film they did not produce but did distribute. What’s more – the $12 million figure may be greatly inflated, because Angel Studio’s “Guild Members” get 2 free movie tickets, and their “pay it forward” model of encouraging moviegoers to pay for others to go see a screening could skew the data.

It’s difficult to know all of the financial arrangements, as Angel Studios acquired this film and did not produce it entirely. But they did certainly spend quite a bit of money on it. To put it simply:

Angel Studios needed this to go well. It did not go well.

To make matters worse, the marketing material was, at times, downright goofy. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a quiet, deeply intellectual theologian in Germany who was born a hundred years ago. His primary interests, at the time of his writing of seminal works such as The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together were the Sermon on the Mount, training pastors, and convincing the German church to stop allowing the government so much power in its doctrine and teachings. In an incredibly brave moment, he did, in fact, pass information once or twice to a British clergyman in connection with a plot against Hitler. This was done at the insistence of his family, and he decided to play messenger when it was asked of him on those occasions. Bonhoeffer was indeed a brave man who could preach an unpopular truth and who did, in his way, resist Hitler. But his primary concern was working out theology, ecclesiology, and figuring out how Christians ought to live in peace and charity.

Angel Studios’ promotional material not only glossed over so much of the real character of the man behind the movie, they chose the tagline “Pastor, Spy, Assassin.” Bonhoeffer was indeed a pastor. Calling him a “spy” is true in the technical sense, but it does seem to be stretching the truth, or at least exaggerating. Calling him an assassin is just flat-out untrue.

Nevertheless, in Angel Studios’ initial promos, they had Dietrich Bonhoeffer wearing a suicide bomber’s vest under a trench coat, outside of a Nazi building.

This image was apparently scrubbed from the internet by Angel, upon receiving immediate ridicule, but we saved the image for the sake of this article.
Their updated poster wasn’t much better. They replaced the suicide bomber’s vest with a gun in the hands of a shifty-eyed Bonhoeffer walking down the streets of Germany.

This, in short, did not happen. Bonhoeffer was an avowed pacifist.

It all seems to be a very conscious and deliberate attempt to paint Dietrich Bonhoeffer as something that he objectively was not. He was not a hired gun, an assassin, an advocate of political violence, or a scheming hitman, as exciting as those things may seem.

He ran a school for pastors. He preached in Lutheran Churches. He held some views that evangelicals would agree with, and others they would passionately disagree with.

Even a cursory look at the source material would make it very clear to the makers of this film that depicting Bonhoeffer with a gun as he sneaks through the streets is wildly misleading (to say nothing of the suicide bombing vest…). And ultimately, I think that’s what was this film’s undoing.

Angel Studios – an explicitly faith-based organization – doesn’t always seem to care much about the truth.

Lessons for Christian Business Owners

No one likes to be “sold a bill of goods.” No one wants to be lied to, exaggerated to, or to feel like they were let down on a promise. When you throw the name of God into the mix, however, this is all doubly true. Metaxas’ book Boenhoffer was a New York Times bestseller not that many years ago, and a reasonable portion of the target audience likely read the book – which meant that they knew the whole “assassin” thing was purposely misleading.
Authenticity has always mattered, but in terms of dollars and cents, it might matter now more than ever.

Additionally, the methods of reaching their target audience seem to have fallen flat as well. This is anecdotal, but according to the S2W readers that we surveyed, people were unaware that the film even existed. One in particular, a reader in Southern California, is a big fan of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and had this to say:

“It’s interesting I wasn’t marketed that movie at all. I get all the normal Christian media I think…”

We’re left with two key takeaways:

1) Authenticity matters. Telling the truth matters. Purposefully misrepresenting someone apparently ends up in lawsuits and embarrassingly public fights. This kind of thing turns people off from fandom.

2) Despite all of our analytics, social media, and data mining… In some ways, it’s getting harder for small to mid-sized companies to be sure that they’re reaching their target audience. It takes good marketing, wise media buying choices, and prudent timing to allow your product to make a splash in this busy, distracted economy. This seems like a good time to remind our readers that Fidelitas is the top-notch agency that produces this newsletter.

Bonhoeffer is shaping up to be a box office bomb. Maybe Angel Studios is able to find great success with upcoming films, or leverage their past revenue into a successful run in selling shares of their company. But companies of this size can’t survive too many Bonhoeffers. For the wise business owner, take a lesson on the disastrous PR and marketing from this film, and make sure your messaging is hitting the target before you roll it out en masse.

For what it’s worth, we did go and see the movie. This isn’t really the sort of publication to do an in-depth movie review, but it seems appropriate to say that much about the movie was fine, even good. The production value was good, the music was good, and the acting was mostly good as well. The editing was not good, and some of the dialogue was clunky. The film itself did have some historical issues, but it was not nearly as unhinged as the marketing for the film was. At the end of the day, however, this movie didn’t seem to have a lock on what the underlying story was supposed to be. It trafficked in hype, short-lived emotions, and clever thematic ploys while gravely neglecting the fundamentals of storytelling.

And neglecting the fundamentals doesn’t usually work out in business, either.

Quick Hits

---

• Greek “ghost towns” offer an eerie example of population collapse in Western countries, with dire economic consequences.
• A Washington pastor is sued for promoting a $6 million crypto Ponzi scheme to his congregation.
• Super sports agent Scott Boras secured the largest MLB contract of all time for his client Juan Soto.
• The Daystar saga continues: Jonathan and Suzie Lamb reveal evidence that the ministry had them followed, tracked, and rummaged through their things.
• Embattled Christian baker Jack Phillips, whose business has repeatedly been targeted by activists bringing lawsuits, emerges victorious yet again in a big win for religious liberty in the U.S.A.

---