A Hollywood insider has remarked on a noticeable change for the better in Tinseltown since the release of Mel Gibson’s smash hit “The Passion of The Christ” in 2003.

Gibson’s groundbreaking Bible-based movie recounting the last hours of Jesus’ life has paved the way to uncharted Hollywood territory, meaning we can expect more films catering to conservative tastes, according to film festival founder Jason Apuzzo.

Apuzzo, founder of the conservative Liberty Film Festival and co-editor of conservative film forum Libertas, said after all these years in Hollywood he was slowly seeing changes for the better.

According to the Liberty founder, it is thanks to The Passion that Hollywood’s eyes have been opened to the lucrative market of movies relaying religious themes. The film has also amply demonstrated that the market for such films encompasses not just Christians but the core cinema-going public, with a potentially huge pay-off.

Apuzzo said of ‘The Passion of Christ’: “That film brought a lot of people back to the movies who may not necessarily have been Christians or conservatives, but who simply are just tired of bad films.”

He added, Gibsons blockbuster also attracted back to the cinema those who “are just tired of films that don’t have a personal dimension to them.”

Research conducted by movie studios after the runaway success of The Passion showed that a large portion of the movie’s core audience was male, both Christian and non-Christian, with expendable income between the ages of 18 and 34.

The research also revealed that people went to see the film not simply because of the publicity, but also because they were looking for quality moviemaking and were attracted by the personal investment of Gibson in making the film a reality.

Mr Apuzzo said one of the positive outcomes of the success of The Passion is the increased respect for Christians as a legitimate and substantial proportion of the general cinema-going public. He also acknowledged a subtle shift in focus within movies catering for the non-Christian market from the usual mindless profit-driven commercial entertainment, to films with greater genuine personal investment like Gibson’s.

“So you see a couple of different things happening right now,” says Apuzzo. “You see people in Hollywood now angling toward both Christian audiences, more conservative audiences, but also trying to just break away from the comic book movies and these sort of over-hyped commercial ventures.”

Apuzzo also welcomed the move away from the usual left-wing propaganda noticeable in so many movies today. He said he expected to see some good movies emerging from Hollywood in the future.