Last year they made My Penguin Friend, but is City Hill more than a kid-friendly production house? It appears so, but we're not sure yet.
Maybe making films "with a conscience" isn't the best way to say it... maybe more of a heart. But the conscious effort nevertheless to make better, more ethical film for general audiences (better than Hollywood, at least) can be a successful goal or at least a good goal to have.
Jonathan Lim, City Hill's founder had an interview awhile back with The Collision.
And news for the company that we care about includes My Penguin Friend, which did fairly well with critics, but also a biblical epic called In the Beginning, that is currently in the works.
Scott Roxborough
There are a few other works that the company has already made... none of the others appear to be faith-based like In the Beginning. Meaning: this could be a very good thing or a bad thing.
The belief I think is that a family-friendly film made for mainstream audiences will be able to do as Angel Studios has done, in theaters... to collect the bills that Hollywood has been leaving on the table by failing to cater to these wider audiences.
There is a big reason for this problem in Hollywood. It's an ideological belief system that is so important to them that it transcends profits or the craft of cinema. It's called wokism, and the effects of it is more like "propaganda" than just a case of "bad filmmaking." And now it's time for the ideological backlash which will likely be in a very socially conservative direction.
This means that in order for new viewers to trust a new incoming voice like City Hill, Hollywood's outdated ideology will need to be edited from the scripts, as Disney has already started doing. Including but not limited to, getting rid of historical revisionism, feminism, race-swapping, barring pro-religious talk from the screen, and a bevy of leftist political solutions such as socialism, egalitarianism, and open-minded pacifism when in the presence of new people and their new ideas.
All of these extremely "woke" ideological stances appear to have only succeeded in bending truths to appease one side of the political aisle, and they have not served western civilization very well as a result. It was far from a reasonable or balanced trend.
Going back the equivalent of about 50 years might barely even out the scales. I joke of course.
In this climate these new production houses may be thinking that fun and light fare is good enough, and they may find themselves mistaken. As an ideological war goes on in Hollywood, and the studios start to reform, a new statement of beliefs (in the opposite direction) will be the order of the day when Hollywood's fake surface-level deck-chair-shuffling are not enough to bring back viewers.
What is likely true, therefore, is that "a convenient syncretism" between wokism and other more traditional belief systems may be sniffed out, and side-eyed mercilessly. And when a production is saying things like this below (as the THR article above states)...
“They’ve met the Pope twice to talk to him about the project,” says David Garrett of Mister Smith Entertainment. “But they’re also consulted with top astrophysicists from CERN so that what will be depicted on screen will be something akin to what the Big Bang would have actually looked like. It won’t be God’s hands molding trees and oceans.” --THR.com
...it might not be comforting. Even many Catholics aren't a fan of the Pope, since he often represents a move AWAY FROM the traditional family values in the church. He often even stands with woke values at times. In addition, a desire to straddle the accepted scientific dogmas (as indicated by their CERN experts) with the religious dogmas might not be a winning strategy.
And even worse, it's not just one religion either, as the article states...
"The filmmakers plan to combine the biblical creation story, a text common to the Jewish, Christian and Muslim religions, with the latest in astrophysical research to be both faithful to scripture and scientifically accurate." --THR.com
That means it will be accurate according to a certain "socially acceptable" viewpoints, and a certain whitewashed, and inoffensive pastiche which may even please the Islamists... who, no, I'm sorry to say, do not hold biblical truths to be accurate. In fact you are only planting a mine field that is waiting to go off as soon as you say that this is what you're doing for a so-called faith-based audience.
So, since it is clear that a viable "scientific consensus theory" has been debunked for some time now, we can know that we are not dealing with an authentic handling of the source material, or of science. Only a manhandling and manipulation of facts to suit a personal agenda. A whitewashing of truth.
Again, this is not comforting.
Of course we are not talking about some kind of requirement that these folks tow some kind of religious or party line. Only that we acknowledge that the accepted "establishment" views, along with the "socially acceptable" views, and the "politically correct" views have hit a hard wall of reality in the last few years.
The gooshy splat of relativism is all over that wall, as we now acknowledge that the science skeptics, climate skeptics, and media skeptics were very right to be skeptical. And so, "why isn't this company?" indeed.
We hope that nobody feels obligated to take any "political position" whatsoever, because that's the point of the conservative backlash. But they should be able to understand that wokism, along with the other dogmas the establishment mainstream media have championed are not strictly political or social or religious in their effects. They claim to be master of all.
So, we hope, instead, that people begin to understand just how harmful Hollywood's merciless universal wokism has been. The destructive culture they have supported has been more than opinionated. It has been harmful, caustic, and damaging to the entire country. Dividing, not uniting, and selling horrifying solutions to more than their political allies, but also to helpless kids.
When we can't even "stand up" against such a damaging path that Hollywood has taken, we must understand that we may also not be trusted. It's nothing personal, but families and kids are precious to us, as they ought to be protected. They ought not just be allowed to see 'whatever,' nor should they ever be treated as adults. So, our good curators will want to see bonifides. And we will too, in time.
We wish them the best in their journey to make good cinema, and we will be following their efforts.
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Did you enjoy this article? Did you enjoy this update on City Hill Arts as 'another new face' trying to make Hollywood a better place? What is your view on them? Will their efforts make Hollywood better? Let us know down below (with sub) or on our social media!
