Watch: For King & Country’s music video for Ben-Hur
If you watched last Sunday’s Ben-Hur simulcast, you’ve already seen the music video for ‘Ceasefire’, the song that was used in the most recent trailer for that film. Today that video, which features the Christian pop band For King & Country as well as some new footage from the film, went public via the Entertainment Weekly website.
Here is the video:
There’s an interesting, and tricky, balancing act going on here.
First, as Mark Burnett said during the simulcast, which was hosted by Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, the film is being promoted in two different ways to two different audiences: “For the secular world, we’re not out there marketing a Jesus movie, we’re marketing a great action movie, and people are going to come in to this — millions of people — and not even know why they leave seeking to learn more about Jesus.”
Related to this is the fact that a fair chunk of the film’s social-media marketing has revolved around phrases like “Fight for freedom” and “Win the race and start the revolution,” but the Christian marketing for this film — as exemplified by this song — has emphasized themes of forgiveness and letting go of violence and revenge.
So, two audiences, two marketing campaigns — but the fact that a Christian pop song and its call for reconciliation have premiered on one of the biggest “secular” websites around suggests that the lines between those campaigns are blurring somewhat.
Update: I have replaced the EW version of the video with the YouTube version.
Check out earlier trailers and other videos here:
- The first domestic and international trailers, the ‘Welcome to ShareBenHur.com’ video, and the Entertainment Tonight promo (March 16, 2016)
- The ‘Epic Faith’ trailer (March 23, 2016)
- The ‘Rodrigo Santoro as Jesus’ featurette (March 25, 2016)
- The second faith-based trailer (June 8, 2016)
- The Entertainment Tonight reports (June 11, 2016)
- The ‘Chariot Race’ featurette and Entertainment Tonight report (June 13, 2016)
- The ‘Epic’ featurette (July 6, 2016)
- The ‘Jesus the Carpenter’, ‘Jesus Protects the Leper’, ‘Judah and Esther at Camp’ and ‘Judah Helps Jesus’ clips (July 10, 2016)