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LifeZette
May 1 2017
Film Targeted for Exposing the Armenian Genocide
'The Promise,' a $90 million epic drama, bluntly tells of Christians slaughtered during WWI
May 1, 2017
by Zachary Leeman | Updated 01 May 2017 at 1:05 PM
Starring Christian Bale and Jason Isaacs, “The Promise” is a film you likely should be aware of — but it’s doubtful you or many others have even heard of it. Out for nearly two weeks already, the picture hasn’t even managed to earn $10 million at the box office.
Based on a story xabout the Armenian genocide during World War I, “The Promise” was a controversial movie from the beginning. The calculated slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire is something the Turkish government (the modern-day state of the Ottoman Empire) and many politicians refuse to officially acknowledge.
“Promise” director Terry George has said that many films had been attempted in Hollywood about the dark period in history during which Christian Armenians were slaughtered — but government forces worked in the shadows to stop them.
“The attempts to tell the story of the Armenian genocide by Hollywood are quite fascinating,” George told Deadline. “There were two serious attempts to do it in the ’50s, to make a film of a book called ‘Forty Days of Musa Dagh,’ which, in the ’40s, had become a bestseller across Europe and America. It was written by Franz Werfel. MGM or one of the other studios tried to put it together. The Turkish government leaned on the State Department and the U.S. government at the time, who then leaned on Hollywood, and the film was stopped.”
He continued, “Sylvester Stallone tried to make the same book in the ’70s and had the same thing happen. There was a current that was like, ‘The studio doesn’t want to make this.’ The Turkish government had become involved, and the sense that I got, and the research seems to show, [that] Turkey has enormous, disproportionate power and influence because of its strategic position. In the ’50s and ’70s, it was the Cold War and where they were on the border, and their situation with Israel. Today, clearly, they’re just as influential.”
This influence is why George chose to create his movie without major publicity. "We deliberately flew under the radar," he said.
Thus, "The Promise" accomplished something other films about the Armenian genocide never could: It was finished and released.
However, the final product has faced hurdles that many speculate have come from the Turkish government and Armenian genocide-deniers.
The New York Times reports that Daniel Giménez Cacho — an actor from "Promise" — said he was contacted by a Turkish ambassador before filming started. The ambassador wanted to emphasize that the genocide of 1.5 million Christians had never happened.
"The Promise" also walked into theaters with strangely bad buzz. The movie racked up over 50,000 one-star ratings on the website IMDB. This was before the film ever hit theaters and had only premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival; there, only a few thousand people actually saw it.
Worse still is the release of a competing film entitled, "The Ottoman Lieutenant," a movie starring Josh Hartnett that was reportedly backed by Turkish investors. The similarities between "Ottoman" and "Promise" are strangely close; yet each film holds a very different view about the slaughter of Christian Armenians.
LifeZette
May 1 2017
Film Targeted for Exposing the Armenian Genocide
'The Promise,' a $90 million epic drama, bluntly tells of Christians slaughtered during WWI
May 1, 2017
by Zachary Leeman | Updated 01 May 2017 at 1:05 PM
Starring Christian Bale and Jason Isaacs, “The Promise” is a film you likely should be aware of — but it’s doubtful you or many others have even heard of it. Out for nearly two weeks already, the picture hasn’t even managed to earn $10 million at the box office.
Based on a story xabout the Armenian genocide during World War I, “The Promise” was a controversial movie from the beginning. The calculated slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire is something the Turkish government (the modern-day state of the Ottoman Empire) and many politicians refuse to officially acknowledge.
“Promise” director Terry George has said that many films had been attempted in Hollywood about the dark period in history during which Christian Armenians were slaughtered — but government forces worked in the shadows to stop them.
“The attempts to tell the story of the Armenian genocide by Hollywood are quite fascinating,” George told Deadline. “There were two serious attempts to do it in the ’50s, to make a film of a book called ‘Forty Days of Musa Dagh,’ which, in the ’40s, had become a bestseller across Europe and America. It was written by Franz Werfel. MGM or one of the other studios tried to put it together. The Turkish government leaned on the State Department and the U.S. government at the time, who then leaned on Hollywood, and the film was stopped.”
He continued, “Sylvester Stallone tried to make the same book in the ’70s and had the same thing happen. There was a current that was like, ‘The studio doesn’t want to make this.’ The Turkish government had become involved, and the sense that I got, and the research seems to show, [that] Turkey has enormous, disproportionate power and influence because of its strategic position. In the ’50s and ’70s, it was the Cold War and where they were on the border, and their situation with Israel. Today, clearly, they’re just as influential.”
This influence is why George chose to create his movie without major publicity. "We deliberately flew under the radar," he said.
Thus, "The Promise" accomplished something other films about the Armenian genocide never could: It was finished and released.
However, the final product has faced hurdles that many speculate have come from the Turkish government and Armenian genocide-deniers.
The New York Times reports that Daniel Giménez Cacho — an actor from "Promise" — said he was contacted by a Turkish ambassador before filming started. The ambassador wanted to emphasize that the genocide of 1.5 million Christians had never happened.
"The Promise" also walked into theaters with strangely bad buzz. The movie racked up over 50,000 one-star ratings on the website IMDB. This was before the film ever hit theaters and had only premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival; there, only a few thousand people actually saw it.
Worse still is the release of a competing film entitled, "The Ottoman Lieutenant," a movie starring Josh Hartnett that was reportedly backed by Turkish investors. The similarities between "Ottoman" and "Promise" are strangely close; yet each film holds a very different view about the slaughter of Christian Armenians.
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