World Wide Pictures (WWP) is a film distributor and production company established as a subsidiary of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) in 1951. It is involved in the production and distribution of evangelistic films, the production of Graham crusade films, and publicity for Graham crusades.
WWP got its start after Graham met Dick Ross, who had produced a documentary film of Graham's 1950 crusade in Portland, Oregon. That film's success led the BGEA to buy Ross's production company, and hire him as the president of a new BGEA subsidiary incorporated as the Billy Graham Evangelistic Film Ministry (which was to be WWP's official name until 1980).
WWP's first feature film was Mr. Texas, produced during Graham's 1951 Fort Worth, Texas Crusade. It was also during the 1950s that WWP established production facilities in Burbank, California.
Perhaps WWP's best-known production was the 1965 film The Restless Ones, featuring Kim Darby. According to an October 14, 1966 issue of Christianity Today more than 120,000 professions of faith were recorded after more than two million people viewed the film. Other major feature films included Two a Penny (1965), which starred Cliff Richard. Both The Hiding Place (1975) (with Julie Harris) and Time to Run (1973) received Golden Globe nominations for Most Promising Newcomer.
WWP stopped national releases of its films in the late 1980s. The company sold its Burbank studio, moved its headquarters to Minneapolis, and switched to working with independent producers and distributing films to churches, on home video, and as made-for-TV movies.
They cautiously returned to feature films in 2001, with the limited national release of Road to Redemption, WWP's first comedy after over 125 films (including nine major motion pictures). The film starred Pat Hingle. It was followed by The Climb, which starred Jason Winston George, Ned Vaughn, and Dabney Coleman, and featured Todd Bridges. In 2003, the company released its latest film Last Flight Out.
Famous quotes containing the words world, wide and/or pictures:
“I believe a man is born first unto himself—for the happy developing of himself, while the world is a nursery, and the pretty things are to be snatched for, and pleasant things tasted; some people seem to exist thus right to the end. But most are born again on entering manhood; then they are born to humanity, to a consciousness of all the laughing, and the never-ceasing murmur of pain and sorrow that comes from the terrible multitudes of brothers.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“[In early adolescence] she becomes acutely aware of herself as a being perceived by others, judged by others, though she herself is the harshest judge, quick to list her physical flaws, quick to undervalue and under-rate herself not only in terms of physical appearance but across a wide range of talents, capacities and even social status, whereas boys of the same age will cite their abilities, their talents and their social status pretty accurately.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)
“As for pictures and museums, that don’t trouble me. The worst of going abroad is that you’ve always got to look at things of that sort. To have to do it at home would be beyond a joke.”
—Margaret Oliphant (1828–1897)