Have we had enough yet? Have we had enough of these miraculous journeys to and from the afterlife? Apparently not. Today marks the release of the long-awaited movie adaptation of Don Piper’s bestseller 90 Minutes in Heaven. While tales about journeys to heaven (and hell) far pre-date Piper’s 2004 effort, he is the one responsible for kicking-off the contemporary obsession.
The heaven tourism genre has proven remarkably lucrative to authors and their publishers, tallying well over 20,000,000 books sold over the past decade. 90 Minutes in Heaven is jumping genres and seems primed for box office success, though it may have trouble chasing down 2014’s screen adaptation of Heaven Is For Real which earned over $100,000,000.
To mark the release of 90 Minutes in Heaven I have teamed up with Josh Byers to prepare an infographic we’ve titled Greetings From Heaven: A Modern History of Heaven Tourism. I hope you enjoy it, and would be grateful if you’d share it.
Are you perplexed by the heaven tourism genre? If so, here are some reviews I have written in the past: Heaven Is For Real, 90 Minutes in Heaven, Heaven Is Real, and 23 Minutes in Hell. You may also like to read my article Heaven Tourism.