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Football-themed Family Movie Night airs Sat.


NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP) — The eighth movie in the Family Movie Night initiative will air Saturday night on NBC with the broadcast of “Game Time, Tackling the Past,” at 8 Eastern.

The film tells the story of a pro football player who is forced to reconnect with the family he abandoned after his father suffers a heart attack.

Family Movie Night is an initiative launched by Walmart and Procter and Gamble to air regular movies for the whole family. The goal is to make the films weekly, but that will only be achieved if the current films — airing every month or two — are successful.

“We do have longer-term plans that are under way for next year going forward and we’ve seen that there is a regular need for this with families beyond once a month, once a quarter,” said Ben Simon, director of brand marketing for Walmart. “There is a definite weekly need for programming that a family can gather around and tune in to…. We are opportunistically looking into next year and going forward on how to continue to support this unmet need for families.”

The most recent Family Movie Night film, “Who is Simon Miller?” was No. 1 in its time slot and attracted 28 percent more viewers than did “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” which aired in the same time slot on ABC.

Families need to “vote with their remote,” said Brian Wells, the executive producer of the family night films.

“There is this big, fat, giant experiment going on right now through Family Movie Night with the networks and even the networks that aren’t involved that are all watching this to say, ‘Boy, do families really show up for this kind of content or not?'” said Wells, who is the chief creative officer for Fly Over Studios.

Another Family Movie Night film will air in December.
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Compiled by Michael Foust, associate editor of Baptist Press. For more information about Family Movie Night, visit www.familymovienight.com. To read Baptist Press’ overview of Family Movie Night, go to www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?id=35885

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