Believers aren't the only ones averse to risks. Movie executives in general tend to play it safe, but for different reasons, most of which are money.
Most creatives don't tend to have millions of dollars sitting around, and movies are particularly expensive to make, so they need some rich people or corporations to fund them. But first, they have to convince these funders that their film is a good investment. And that's not unreasonable. Anyone who invests in something wants some assurance that they'll make their money back. It's just that it's hard to predict how well any piece of art will sell. The quality of any art is pretty subjective. You basically just have to make something you like and hope other people will like it. At least that's what most of us will do when left to our own devices.
Or you could make something that's kind of similar to other things that have been popular and made lots of money. Or you could make a sequel to something that's already popular. Or you could make a movie adaptation of a popular book. Or you could reboot an existing popular franchise. These ideas may seem less creative, but they're easier to sell to executives, because each of them already has an established audience. They're relatively safe. But when you bring an idea that's completely original, the corporations are hesitant to green-light it. Even if you executive your idea very well, they don't know if anyone will be interested in that kind of movie. And they're not just taking US audiences into account. It has to sell in China too.
Of course, history is full of works that people didn't believe in that went on to become huge hits. Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, was supposed to be a waste, because who wants to watch animated dwarfs for an hour? Now it's a timeless classic and has spawned a HUGE industry for feature length animated films. Phineas and Ferb was turned down by several networks because it was too complicated for kids. Not only did it become wildly popular, but it may have paved the way for several other more sophisticated, perhaps complicated, children's cartoons. Pixar makes something really weird almost every year, usually with great success. There are enough examples of this to fill several blog posts. Nonetheless, it is more economically sound to stick to tried and true formula and subject matter.
This actually effects even Christian media (now, how did I get back on that?) In short, it's harder to get Christian companies to publish, fund, or air anything that doesn't appeal to soccer-moms, which explains why you might be dissatisfied with K-LOVE's song selection. As I've heard one guy explain, there's even a sense in which you have to "sell" your Christian movie to the church. And what will the church "buy" but evangelistic films; films for which they can rent out whole theaters for outreach events. That same guy also pointed out that much of evangelicalism is funded by older people who probably have somewhat narrow views on what they think is important and are more likely to fund movies that are pitched as laying out what Christians believe. Even religious artists find themselves constrained by economics.
This relates to how the "why" of what we make affects our products. When you make movies for money, we wind up with gratuitous sequels to movies that already had perfect endings and other movies that aren't sequels but look suspiciously similar to your first big success, except they aren't as good. When you make movies for evangelism, we wind up with cheesy, saccharine dramas that bore most people under 30. When you do it just for the love of the art is when we tend to get the best, most creative, most genuine, most meaningful work.
Technically, you can make whatever you want, but you probably can't do it all on a large scale. Unless you can get this alternative strategy to work: write a book, watch it become a best-seller, then wait for a big film studio to approach you about a movie.
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