Two projects that were screened during Proclaim 19, the NRB International Christian Media Convention in Anaheim, California, made their releases this week as Christians around the world prepared to celebrate Easter.
Breakthrough
Breakthrough, produced by DeVon Franklin, hit theaters April 17 and is the first faith-based film that 20th Century Fox has been involved with “from the ground up,” according to Franklin.
Starring Chrissy Metz, Breakthrough is based on a true story about a teenager who goes into a coma after falling through an icy lake and his mother’s steadfast prayers for his recovery, which rallied a community and resulted in a miracle.
“People told me, ‘DeVon, you should be producing superhero movies,’” Franklin told Proclaim 19 attendees. “I said, ‘Oh, you don’t realize I did.’ I said, ‘You may think Captain Marvel and Black Panther are something, but that’s all made up.’ This movie, Breakthrough, is about a real superhero – a praying mother. It’s also about the real superpower called prayer.”
Franklin said he hopes Christian audiences will show up at the box office to show Fox there’s a market for such films.
The Chosen
VidAngel, the distributor behind the popular entertainment filtering app of the same name, has released the official trailer and the first episode of its original scripted series The Chosen – the first-ever multi-season television series about the life of Christ as well as the most successful crowd-funded media project ever.
The series, the first episode of which was screened at Proclaim 19, is directed by Dallas Jenkins, son of Left Behind author Jerry Jenkins.
“I thought, ‘If we can see Jesus through the eyes of those who actually met Him, we can be changed and impacted in the same way that they were,’” Jenkins said at the March 28 screening.
“This is an attempt, as much as possible, to authentically capture the oppression and the sadness that people were not only feeling collectively but personally [in Jesus’ day] – the struggles with sin, the struggles with oppression, the struggles with poverty that they were experiencing, and the need and desperation and longing they felt for the Messiah,” he added.
The trailer and Episode 1 are available now at TheChosen.tv.
