Fireproof is the third film to be produced by the non-professionals at Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia, and after just five weeks, it is only a few days away from passing Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie (2002) to become the top-grossing independent evangelical film of all time — despite playing on considerably fewer screens than that film did.
So, naturally, people are beginning to ask if there are any other churches making movies out there — and FilmStew.com points to New Song Community Church in Oceanside, California. This church isn’t going the strictly non-professional route, though; instead, they got Brian Baugh, a cinematographer on films like An American Carol, to direct a teen drama for them, called How to Save a Life. They hope to have a trailer ready for the National Outreach Convention in San Diego next week.
The film has an official website, and the Christian Post ran an article on the film while the cameras were still rolling last summer. The two sources combined indicate that the film will deal with issues like suicide, teen pregnancy, and school shootings. Time will tell whether the resulting film is a decent drama, or a more sensationalistic successor of sorts to those cheesy youth-group movies that I mentioned here a couple years ago.
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