One of the early investors in the film, my friend John Loper, Sr., said this after viewing an early version of "The Reliant" with me:
"Thank you for inviting me to invest in this movie. I want my unsaved brother to watch this movie. It's worth the investment if for no other reason to see my brother get saved!"
I had the privilege of speaking with a distributor right after he viewed "The Reliant" in 2018. With profanity in every other sentence, it was clear we didn't share the same faith in God. Yet this is what he said:
"I never even watched a faith-based film all the way through. 'The Reliant' was the first. I found it engaging and moving, the visual special effects were stellar, and the score was phenomenal. You are an excellent filmmaker!"
So many faith-based films preach to the choir. There's nothing wrong with a "sermon-in-a-film" faith-based movie that targets church-goers. It can be quite profitable as many faith-based films have shown, but that is not what we wanted to do with "The Reliant." We wanted to herald a winsome theme of redemption through Jesus in a movie that "reaches across the aisle" to touch the hearts of those who may never grace the doors of a church or go watch an openly Christian film.
That's why we are so THRILLED to have won FOUR FIRST PLACE AWARDS in secular festivals!
And we just got notified
today
that at another secular film we've been nominated at this month--
we're going to win an award at that festival too!
When we received an "R" rating from the MPAA back in October, I received a hundred emails and facebook messages from people more excited about seeing the movie with this rating! We appealed this rating and finally, after a re-edit, finally got our PG-13, but this opened my eyes to the fact that there's an appetite for meaningful Christian films that are not blatantly faith-based. Make no mistake, we don't "soft-peddle" the Gospel at all! We aren't ashamed of the name of Jesus. But this movie has the potential to create more of a buzz among unchurched movie-goers than your typical faith-based film.
Which makes it
more
evangelistic!
In the image below, read what an Amazon reviewer had to say after reading the novel:
