Faith-Based Movie Releases Trailer to Challenge 'Fifty Shades of Grey'
By Paul Bond
In an unusual trailer released online Thursday, a small, faith-based movie is drumming up publicity by comparing itself to Fifty Shades of Grey, the upcoming Universal Pictures movie that is expected to be explicitly erotic and has nothing to do with Christianity.
The film, called Old Fashioned, centers on a former frat boy who finds Jesus and wants to experience an old-fashioned courtship with a free-spirited woman.
While the plots of Old Fashioned and Fifty Shades of Grey are nothing alike, the films — technically speaking — both deal with romance, of a sort, and they both open Valentine’s Day weekend next year.
Those similarities are apparently enough for Old Fashioned to market itself as a worthy alternative to the much bigger-budgeted adaptation of EL James’ best-selling novel.
In the video above released Thursday, Old Fashioned star, director and writer Rik Swartzwelder says: “Clearly, we’re picking a fight with Fifty Shades. We’re not only picking a fight, we’re picking a fight with the schoolground bully, likely to get our nose busted in two. … Love and romance are created by God and designed to lead to marriage and physical intimacy. … I find it impossible to not believe that, deep down, we don’t want to celebrate something more than Fifty Shades.”
After Swarzwelder’s remarks, the video segues into a traditional trailer. “When did treating women with respect become the joke?” asks Clay, the main character. See the video below.
“Fifty Shades is short-term titillation and Old Fashioned offers a long-term alternative,” says producer Nathan Nazario.
"Audiences want to hear that the best of the past is still possible — that a relationship can be the safe room," Nazario adds, loosely referencing the Red Room of Pain, a place of pain and sexual pleasure in Fifty Shades.
Old Fashioned, also starring Elizabeth Roberts, hails from Freestyle Releasing with Skoche Films, in association with Motion Picture Pro Studios
