Rev. Wayne's Pearly Gates is going to require some serious refactoring if the studio (and director) want to avoid legions of pissed off fundies protesting at local theaters.
I doubt a movie skewering pentecostalism would lead to legions of fundies protesting. Growing up southern baptist, as fundie as it gets, we too would make fun of pentecostals.
There's good and bad publicity, and while the line might be blurred for software startups, it's fairly clear for film studios. Pissing off the conservative crowd in North America comes with some consequences for an entertainment/media company.
Case in point: The Golden Compass. The studio was shooting for a $30 million dollar opening weekend. They grossed something like $8.8 mil. You might recall that leading up to the opening there was a lot discussion (and a few calls for protests) surrounding some of the material in the books.
Compare/contrast "The Chronicles of Narnia". Both movies had similar budgets and targeted the same audience. Chronicles wasn't burdened by a bunch of controversy and pulled in ~$20 mil on the opening weekend.
According to Rotten Tomatoes, both critics and audiences thought Chronicles was simply a better movie. Unless you think the critics were somehow swayed by protestors? Seems unlikely.
The Golden Compass screwed itself. Trying to appease the protest, they softened the message, thus losing fans of the book in favor of conservatives who were never going to see it anyway.
TO be fair adapting a book about the evil church with the studio forcing them not to mention the church. It's a bit like having Sony insisting that Pearl Harbor shouldn't mention the Japanese.
Those were movies targeted at least partially at the children/young adult audience. The Snow Crash movie is unlikely to be targeted at the same demographic.
