Religious internet users have started a petition urging movie studios not to distribute Habit, a film in which Michael Jackson’s daughter Paris portrays Jesus Christ as a young, lesbian woman.
“A new blasphemous Hollywood film is predicted to come out depicting Jesus as a lesbian woman,” the petition’s statement reads. “Distributors haven’t picked it up as of yet, so let’s please spread awareness and wake people up to the Christianophobic garbage that is spread nowadays.”
At this point, over 300,000 people have signed the petition. Unfortunately for them, however, the film’s producer, Donovan Leitch, announced principal photography on the project had been finished before the coronavirus pandemic began, and that they’re now in post-production.
Although Habit is said to be about Christ, it isn’t really. In the film, Jackson does not play the savior himself so much as a woman with a “Jesus fetish” who gets mixed up in a drug deal and escapes by dressing up as a nun.
One Million Moms, a conservative activist group whose goal is to “help fight against indecency,” also started boycotting the film on grounds that its story is “sacrilegious” and “ridicules people of faith,” two claims which are quite baffling considering footage has yet to be revealed.
In any case, Habit will likely not arrive in theaters for quite some time. Its delayed release will be caused not by the petitions though, but the pandemic. As a second wave of infections makes its way around the states, which prematurely relaxed social distancing guidelines, cinemas might be closed for much longer than originally anticipated.
As such, Jackson’s film, if completed, can either wait for theaters to reopen or go straight to VOD. And given the amount of movies that have already opted for the second of two strategies, the latter situation may just be more probable.
