Promoting a Movie on a Wing and a Prayer

When it comes to marketing movies, tiny Providence Entertainment knows it lacks the financial muscle of the major Hollywood studios, but that isn’t stopping the faith-based production and distribution company from aggressively pushing its latest release, the teen-oriented sports film “Extreme Days.”

The small, family-friendly film, which opens in 354 theaters Friday, attempts to capitalize on the current phenomenon among today’s teens of competing in extreme sports.

Driven by a hard-rock soundtrack featuring Audio Adrenaline, PAX217, Newsboys, Toby Mac and others, the film is a fast-paced road-trip movie chock-full of surfing, skateboarding, BMXing and the like. It also makes a point of reflecting strong moral values while not preaching any specific religion.

To market the movie, Providence is not only targeting the Christian community but also concentrating its media buys on youth-oriented MTV.

“The best way to reach our target audience, we’ve found, is through MTV,” said David Bowers, an outside consultant who is working with Providence on marketing the film. “MTV has worked with us. We are sponsors of two MTV ‘Total Request Live’ shows. In addition, we are going to be running in excess of 100 [commercial] spots on MTV in the week leading up to the release.”

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Providence, which released the hit 1999 religious thriller “The Omega Code,” has enlisted a small army of volunteers to contact theater managers in their communities and make sure that the theaters have enough “Extreme Days” posters and that trailers are playing regularly.

“The studios pay big bucks to have people check on this stuff,” Bowers noted. “We have volunteers.”

Bowers said the film follows four young guys who go on a road trip competing in all kinds of extreme sports.

“There really is no religious aspect to the movie,” Bowers said. “I think they mention God once when somebody dies. For example, the female lead tells the guy she likes she wants to get married before she has sex. It promotes abstinence in a low-key way.”