Heisman trophy winner, author, and Christian speaker Tim Tebow adds a filmmaking hat to his resumé with the release of the new film Run the Race on Feb. 22. The two-time national champion and ESPN college football analyst serves as executive producer, along with his older brother Robby, for the story about two brothers facing adversity in a small Alabama town.
“I never had the goal of being in the movie industry,” Tebow recently said during an interview for the film. “This storytelling is just another avenue to encourage people. (High school) is not always an easy place for a lot of young people and I have a heart for that.”
Brothers Zach (Tanner Stine) and David (Evan Hofer) face the loss of their mother and the abandonment of their father, while Zach determines to obtain a college scholarship to help the boys escape their troubled surroundings. For Tebow, the script, penned by Jake McEntire with director Chris Dowling and Jason Baumgardner, appealed to him because of the boys’ lives were defined by tragedy.
“We all go through our own faith journey and we asked the questions and you ask ‘Why? God, where are You in this?’” he said. “And that’s why I feel like one of the biggest themes for me and the movie is understanding, even in your lows, that God loves you and He’s been chasing you and he, and he wants to know you and support you and, and He gave his best for you. And you can know that in the lows just as much as in the highs, maybe even more.”
Tebow shared that life has not always turned out as he expected, most recently when he made the choice to leave football for a career in baseball, which he joked, “only a few people criticized me for that.”
“If you would have asked me when I was graduating college, ‘What do you think’s gonna’ happen?,’ Hopefully, I would have said ‘Win a couple of Super Bowls by now,’ but it didn’t happen,” he said. “That door closed and other ones opened. So it’s trusting Him in the midst of all of that. Is it the plan I would have drawn out for myself? No, but also going through it, there’s so much that I’ve learned that I’ve shared.”
Although faith is very much front and center in the new film, Tebow hopes that the message of overcoming adversity will appeal to audiences of all backgrounds.
“We want people of all walks of life to come see it and hopefully get something out of it and to be encouraged,” he said. “If nothing else, just to know God loves them and to be able to share that message and whatever background, wherever they’re from, whatever race, just that God loves all of us, where we’re at, who we are, where we’re from. And hopefully, that’s a message that brings people together and not separates us.”
Run the Race, also starring Mykelti Williamson, Frances Fisher, Kelsey Reinhardt, Jake McEntire, and Kristoffer Polaha, releases on Feb. 22 from WTA Group/Reserve Entertainment/10th Leper Productions.
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