Film awards haven’t shared ‘The Passion’

Director Mel Gibson, who won a best picture Oscar for his 1995 epic, “Braveheart,” may have hit the box-office jackpot this year with “The Passion of the Christ.” Yet he’s come up empty on the awards front: No year-end kudos, not even a Golden Globe nomination. And given Hollywood ambivalence toward his controversial film, an Oscar nomination on Jan. 25 seems unlikely.

Shot in Aramaic and distributed by tiny Newmarket Films, the $30-million project became the unlikeliest of blockbusters. With $609.5 million in global ticket sales, the movie took in $370.3 million in the U.S. alone, becoming No. 9 on the all-time list of top-grossing titles and No. 3 for the year. On the home video front, where sales usually exceed domestic box office, it was a mild disappointment, however. Consumers spent about $233 million on 12 million copies, about half of industry expectations.

Much of the success was attributable to its nontraditional marketing strategy -- a grass-roots campaign targeting evangelicals and fundamentalist Protestants. The enormity of their turnout highlighted the strength of the religious demographic, foreshadowing its impact on the November election. Representing opposing sides in the cultural wars, Gibson and documentarian Michael Moore were said to be runners-up in Time magazine’s “person of the year” designation ultimately given to President George W. Bush.

Gibson has been active in the construction of an Agoura Hills church devoted to his personal brand of Catholicism. He hasn’t revealed what his next film might be, though the biblical tale of Judah and the Maccabees is on his agenda.

His Icon Productions, which also distributes films in the U.K. and Australia, has three TV shows on the air: “Complete Savages” (ABC) “Kevin Hill” (UPN), and “Clubhouse,” which CBS didn’t renew for next season.