Could Hollywood entice younger audiences by having a little faith?
A surprising new Future of Faith study from The Center for Scholars & Storytellers (CSS) at UCLA suggests that both Gen Z and Gen Alpha crave realistic and complex depictions of religion and spirituality in their entertainment that go beyond stereotypes. The group surveyed over 2,000 people, ages 14-24, and a majority cited a sensitivity to how their beliefs were portrayed on-screen.
Among the interesting data points:
- Only around 40% felt that “people who hold beliefs or worldviews like theirs were accurately represented in the media.”
- 70% of “religious respondents said the way their religion or spirituality is portrayed in the media affects how others treat them.”
- “More than 97% of religious respondents and 80% of nonreligious respondents said a piece of media had spiritually moved, inspired or comforted them.”
- Asks from young audiences to storytellers include: both existing on-screen and being in the rooms where decisions are made; showing the ordinary side of religion vs. only the most extreme elements; showing internal group diversity; and having spiritual characters be complex and not just token.
Respondents weren’t shy in suggesting they thought Hollywood could do a better job with well-rounded depictions of faith and spirituality that didn’t veer into stereotype.
“We heard from young people that they wanted to see grappling with faith,” says CSS founder and CEO Yalda T. Uhls, Ph.D., in an interview with Variety about the findings. “They’re at this age when they leave home, they no longer have the structure of adults saying, ‘You go to church, go to this.’ They’re around all these other people, and a lot of them do question their faith and they try to do it safely. But that’s one of the things they complained about: there’s a lot of performative religion and policing from their faith groups online. They want to be able to have honest discussions.”
Uhls, the senior author of the study, is a professor in UCLA’s psychology department, and previously worked for nearly two decades as a senior executive at studios like MGM and Sony. Her background makes her confident that developing spirituality-forward storylines could help the entertainment industry engage with younger audiences. Given the turnout at the Aug. 5 CSS event The Future of Faith, where the findings were presented, Hollywood is listening.
“It’s a big opportunity,” she says of spirituality-forward content. “At our event, we had execs from Netflix, Amazon, NBC, Lionsgate. We were talking about that. They’re all exploring it. Lionsgate has several movies around this. They see purely religious movies make a lot of money with that very specific audience, but I think there’s opportunity to integrate it into different divisions — not just the faith division.”
Uhls says respondents cited numerous series and films they believed were positive examples of what they were looking for, including films like “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” “Over the Moon” and “Bend It Like Beckham,” as well as series like “Mo,” “The Good Place,” “Ms. Marvel” and “Avatar: The Last Airbender.”
Yet the story also doesn’t have to depict the religious elements reverentially for it to be seen as impactful. Uhls points to the Netflix series “Unorthodox,” about a woman who leaves her Orthodox Jewish community to start life over, as a prime example.
“I remember when ‘Unorthodox’ came out, there was a big backlash from the Orthodox community,” she says. “But I bet younger people are really thinking deeply about these questions as you’re figuring out who you are.”
That sentiment was carried by the keynote speaker of the Future of Faith event, Dustin Lance Black, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of “Milk.” He spoke about adapting “Under the Banner of Heaven,” a true crime account of murder in the fundamentalist Mormon community, and how the story impacted him due to his real-life faith.
“He used to be a Mormon, and he was queer,” Uhls says. “And so he felt lost. He left the faith, but he went through a very long period questioning it. He still is very spiritual. He said he went back to the Bible and read it and felt like, ‘Wow, there’s stuff in here that I can relate to,’ but it wasn’t reflected in the religious structure of the Mormon faith. So I do think you’ll turn off some people with that, but you will find a lot of young people grateful. I think the young people today, because they have so much information, they want things to be really real. They don’t want to see these glossy lives or fake hypocritical stories that don’t reflect the messiness of real life.”
In recent years, several high-profile directors have tackled projects which lean into discussions about faith. When speaking to Variety in 2024, Lee Daniels said his exorcism-meets-family-drama feature “The Deliverance” was deeply inspired by belief.
“This dysfunctional family finds a higher power, and in this time that we’re in, I think that is what we need to find, whether it’s Buddha, whether it’s Allah, whether it’s Jesus, whether it’s yourself,” he said in the interview. “How do you love yourself more? Because tomorrow isn’t promised and we don’t know what’s happening out here, and it’s dark. I think this is trying to scare you to your Higher Power. I don’t know whether I succeeded, but that’s what I was trying to do.”
And there’s been several high-profile films in recent years which have put a spotlight on wrestling with questions of faith, from 2024’s “Conclave” and “Heretic” to last year’s “Wake Up Dead Man” and “The Testament of Ann Lee.” The trend won’t stop, as it seems that Greta Gerwig’s next film, an adaptation of “Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew,” won’t shy away from author C.S. Lewis’ Christian themes. And these titles don’t even include wholly faith-based projects, like “The Chosen” series and films like “I Can Only Imagine 2.”
Ultimately, Uhls says she’s happy to shine a light on the desire young people have to engage with content that takes spirituality seriously.
“People are very, very interested in Hollywood listening to them,” she says. “There’s nobody, as far as I know, in any studio that is in charge of getting it right. There are people in charge of the creative teams developing the faith content, but they rely on the individual creator to do the homework, and maybe the exec. When I was an executive, nobody talked to me about any of this advocacy. So I didn’t know anything about it until a long time after I left the business.”