At CinemaCon, movie studios across the industry pitch their upcoming projects to theater owners. This year’s event had a bit more riding on it than usual, considering the disastrous state of the U.S. box office post-COVID and the streaming boom.
Those theater owners likely hoped studios had innovative ideas for returning audiences to the cinema. At this year’s CinemaCon, one particular innovation did seem to be making waves: high-quality faith-based films.
Production companies like Kingdom Story Company (“Jesus Revolution”) and Angel Studios (“Sound of Freedom”) used CinemaCon to promote their upcoming slate of films, and it’s no wonder why. Both film houses — and a growing number of others like them — have put out a long list of incredibly well-crafted Christian films over the last few years.
Thanks to those efforts, this writer would go as far as saying faith-based productions are in the midst of a renaissance.
As recently as five years ago, the faith-based genre was regarded as, at best, a niche and, at worst, a joke. Overly saccharine, happy-go-luck plots accompanied by subpar acting and amateurish cinematography were the norm for Christian films.
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As of the early 2020s, that trend is long gone.
Movies like Angel Studios’ “Sound of Freedom” and “Cabrini” are among the best films to come out in the past five years of any genre.
And they’re not alone.
In this writer’s opinion, each one of the following films — all of which came out within the past three years — are incredibly high-quality and have helped raise the bar for Christian filmmaking. Each one of these films boasts top-tier acting, set design, direction, cinematography and writing.
Have you seen these movies?
- 2024’s “Cabrini” from Angel Studios: This epic biopic follows the story of Catholic Saint Frances Cabrini. Stunning Oscar-worthy visuals, incredible performances and top-tier set design set this film apart from not only faith-based films, but virtually everything coming out of Hollywood today.
- 2024’s “Ordinary Angels” from Kingdom Story Company: “Ordinary Angels” should be just another cheesy, sentimental faith-based movie. But it manages to rise above thanks to some incredible writing and great acting.
- 2023’s “Sound of Freedom” from Angel Studios: This is the film that raised the bar for the rest. An Oscar-worthy performance from lead actor Jim Caviezel and equally Oscar-worthy work from director Alejandro Monteverde announced to the world that Angel Studios was playing for keeps.
- 2023’s “The Blind” from various independent studios: In years past, faith-based films have often portrayed an overly sentimental, sunshine-and-rainbows sort of fairy tale faith not at all like our real-life struggles overcoming sin. “The Blind” breaks from that mold in spectacular fashion, showing exactly how faith in Christ can transform a life.
- 2023’s “Jesus Revolution” from Kingdom Story Company: Again, based on the trailers, I expected “Jesus Revolution” to fall into the trap of sentimentality. I was dead wrong. The film shows real-life struggles, which makes watching its characters overcome those struggles even more exciting.
- 2023’s “Nefarious” from Believe Entertainment: “Christian horror movie” sounds like a gimmick, but the horror genre itself is inherently Christian. Why? Because horror often makes a clear divide between “good” and “evil.” The filmmakers behind “Nefarious” understood this well, and threw together themes of Christian theology, horror and faith to make one of the more compelling horror pictures of recent memory.
- 2022’s “Father Stu” from Columbia Pictures: Another major motion picture studio decided to dabble in the faith-based genre — and it paid off. “Father Stu” accomplishes what many pastors and priests have a hard time with — it shows audiences how pain can be a gift from God that brings us closer to him. Mark Wahlberg and Mel Gibson give some of the best performances of their careers, and the film’s decision to showcase a family of men and women who curse like sailors helped ground the story in a realistic setting.
The last few years showed us that faith-based productions like these can be ultra successful — but it’s not just films.
Faith-based television series are proving viable as well.
“The Chosen,” the show following the life of Jesus Christ has resonated well with audiences and has even found widespread success via screenings at the U.S. box office.
Though it wasn’t necessarily a Christian-produced show, one of the top series on Netflix this year was “Testament: The Story of Moses.”
And even more players are looking to get into the entertainment industry.
Canon Press — the book publisher connected to “Christian Nationalist” pastor Doug Wilson — has been developing a streaming app in recent years.
Wilson’s son, N.D. Wilson, an author himself, is working on a children’s animated show called “Blah Blah Black Sheep.”
N.D. Wilson is no small player in entertainment. He helped write and develop “Hello Ninja” for Netflix. According to Animation Magazine, the show — based on a book by Wilson — is one of the streamer’s most popular preschool series.
On N.D. Wilson’s podcast, the writer noted that the art style of the upcoming show (and the children’s book he had written that it is based on) was inspired by Hayao Miyazaki. For those who may not know, Miyazaki is perhaps the most influential anime creator of all time.
The fact that Christian entertainment is to a point where its artists not only know who Miyazaki is but understand his impact speaks volumes to how far the faith-based side of the industry has come.
Going forward for Angel Studios, Kingdom Story Company, Canon Press and others, the sky’s the limit.
