Small Budget With Big Returns: ‘Solo Mio’ Signals Rise Of Faith-Friendly Hits
(ANALYSIS) The romantic comedy "Solo Mio" offered a crashed wedding, epic views of Rome, funny sidekicks, an obligatory meet-cute, the lovely vineyards of Tuscany, a final plot twist and the dawn of new love.
It also included priests performing weddings, glimpses of the Vatican and old-school Italians making the sign of the cross with prayers at a family meal. The star was comedian Kevin James, an outspoken Catholic, and there was a prime role for Jonathan Roumie, another outspoken Catholic, who is best known for playing Jesus in “The Chosen” series. And this independent film was released by Angel Studios.
In today’s cinematic marketplace, was this a “faith-based” film or merely a flashback to rom-coms from the 1950s?
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“I'm all for this. ... I never thought I would ever see in a romantic comedy Paul Blart, Jesus and Alexander from ‘Sons of Anarchy’ journeying together in Italy,” said YouTube critic Joseph Curtis. He was connecting James’ hit “Paul Blart: Mall Cop,” Roumie’s iconic role and the star turn by Kim Coates in the FX series about motorcycle gangs.
As for the rom-com label, Curtis added: “It’s a formula that has been done before — to death — but sometimes it just works.”
For those charting the rise of faith-friendly flicks, the important fact about this small film, with a small cast, a small budget and a short release in theaters, was that it made money before heading to Angel's streaming-video vault.
“Making $26 million, with a $4 million budget, means this movie was a gargantuan success, relatively speaking," said Joseph Holmes, a New York City-based critic who writes for Religion Unplugged, World Magazine and other publications. “These days, the people making Marvel and "Star Wars" movies would be happy with that kind of return on their investments.”
Yes, Disney's live-action “Snow White” remake lost between $170 million and $300 million while igniting yet another culture-wars firestorm. “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” lost an estimated $130 million or more.
Independent films that are family- and faith-friendly can become major hits, such as “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” in 2002, a rom-com that cost $5 million and grossed more than $368 million, with a long run in theaters in the age before streaming channels.
That will never be the norm, said Holmes, reached by Zoom. The key is whether faith-friendly studios can — with small budgets, improved technology and some bankable stars who are religious believers — produce strings of modest hits for mainstream audiences.
In a 2025 Religion & Liberty essay, Holmes argued that moviemakers seeking high rates of return for their investors should, strangely enough, focus on faith-based films and horror.
“The age of the comic book superhero movie is over,” he wrote. “I don't say this with glee. I am a huge fan of superhero movies. ... And there probably always will be superhero movies made — but they will never be what they were in their heyday. ...
“So if superhero movies are dying, what's going to replace them? Surprisingly, it will almost certainly be two genres that few people would expect: Faith-based and horror. This might surprise people because these would seem to attract very different audiences. But the changing realities of both the economics of the film business and American demographics is such that the dominance of both these genres — and potentially a hybrid of the two — is all but inevitable.”
If that combination seems bizarre, filmmakers and investors should remember that “The Exorcist” won an Oscar for the late screenwriter William Blatty, a conservative Catholic. Also, that 1973 classic grossed $430 million, which would be about $1.2 billion today, adjusted for inflation.
While faith-based filmmakers have had some success with drama, they will have to "learn to compete in three or four different genres," such as rom-coms, fantasy and adventure movies, said Holmes. Also, screenwriters should consider digging into the classic mysteries and detective stories written by Christian scribes such as Dorothy Sayers, G.K. Chesterton and P.D. James.
“At some point, you will need to make some movies that can appeal to young men as well as genres that appeal to Christian moms,” noted Holmes. “Faith-based films need to escape from the small silo that they are in, right now.”
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Terry Mattingly is Senior Fellow on Communications and Culture at Saint Constantine College in Houston. He lives in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and writes Rational Sheep, a Substack newsletter on faith and mass media.