Rev. Marshall Mitchell, a pastor in Jenkintown and cofounder of Wit PR is helping to promote Hollywood blockbusters through the church, writes Brooks Barnes for The New York Times.

As Hollywood filmmakers struggle with flat levels of movie goers despite a growing population, they are starting to look at alternative ways to market their movies.

Rev. Mitchell and his Wit PR partner, Corby Pons, have recently been hired to use their clergy connections to promote ‘The Magnificent Seven’ as well as ‘Rules Don’t Apply’ a period romance directed by Warren Beatty.

While using the church to promote a movie may seem a bit bizarre, around 41 percent of millennials engage in some form of daily prayer. Not only that, but many pastors such as Rev Jamal H Bryant, a megachurch pastor in Baltimore, have developed enormous social media networks that can provide word of mouth advertising for an appropriate movie to hundreds of thousands of people across the country.

“Some like Jamal Bryant, because he has such a prodigious network online, become a pipeline to other young pastors,” noted Rev. Mitchell.

Read more about Hollywood’s new thinking at The New York Times by clicking here.