The sequel to the faith-based hit “I Can Only Imagine” leans into family ties and real-life struggles as its creators and cast reconnect to bring a new chapter to audiences, singer-songwriter Bart Millard and actors John Michael Finley and Sammy Dell said in a recent conversation.
Millard, whose life inspired the original film, said the decision to make a sequel came from a desire to reunite the cast and deepen the personal storytelling that resonated with so many viewers.
“Selfishly, the payoff for me has been so many relationships were made in the first movie, like my friendship with John,” Millard said. “We feel like we have a bigger family because of filming.”
The new film revisits the emotional terrain of father-son dynamics that underpinned the first movie. Millard framed the sequel as another intimate exploration of family, this time drawing on his personal experience caring for a son with Type 1 diabetes.
“It’s another father son story,” he said. “Especially with it being about my son and his diabetes… it’s one of those. It’s been a part of our life since he was two. He’s 23 now, and it’s something that sometimes gets overlooked.”
Millard said he hopes the film will “have a voice for people with diabetic kids” and validate the cumulative strain of managing a chronic illness. He described the daily toll: “It’s not cancer, it’s not something I still have my child with me, but it’s a chronic illness, it chips away at you daily. It’s really, really hard.”
In screenings, Millard said parents have responded with visible emotion when the film reflects their struggles. “There’d be a handful of people that have diabetic kids and just in tears going, nobody has ever understood when you say, it’s hard, but your kid’s right there with you.”
For Finley, who portrayed Millard in the first film and returns for the sequel, the project felt like a continuation of bonds formed on set. He recounted initial surprise when producers approached him about returning, recalling early jokes about far-fetched sequel ideas. “When Bart approached me, and Andy approached me, I thought of y’all for real, like, what are we talking about here?” Finley said. But after reading the script and story treatment, he was moved. “They sent me the script and the story idea, and [I was] blown away.”
Finley said the creative team wanted to preserve the emotional authenticity that defined the first film while daring to expand the story.
“We’ve always talked about… if we’re going to do a sequel, because, of course, we had such a great experience. We said, let’s get the gang back together,” he said. The actor indicated that the sequel’s concept had evolved during development, rejecting early, tongue-in-cheek notions in favor of a narrative grounded in the characters’ relationships and real-life stakes.
Sammy Dell, who plays Bart’s son in the film, described the production as familial, recalling camaraderie and mutual support among cast and crew.
“It was a family on that set. Everyone is there to support each other,” Dell said. He reflected on the experience as formative early in his acting career: “This being one of my first movies, it’s like kind of a bar that I always kind of want to reach.”
The original “I Can Only Imagine” was both a career milestone for MercyMe and a notable entry in a broader surge of faith-oriented cinema. Millard suggested that the success of the first film helped open doors in Hollywood for more religiously themed projects.
“I think that faith films right now are an all time high,” he said. “When a movie has any kind of success, Hollywood listens, and there’s a huge fan base out there that has probably felt like they don’t have a voice for a really long time.”
He added that the industry’s approach has shifted since the first film, with studios recognizing that faith-based stories can find wider audiences. “A lot of movie companies kept saying, ‘We just want to sell to the red states’. They’re saying a little bit more than that now,” Millard said, noting a growing appetite for films that blend spiritual themes with universal human experiences. He expressed hope that continued success would elevate the craft of faith films: “I just hope there’s people come and see it, so that we can see more faith films and just the art get better and better.”
Throughout the conversation, Millard returned to the idea of balancing sorrow and gratitude, a motif that informed both his music and the films based on his life. “We always say that, you know, it’s learning to live with grief and gratitude in both hands at the same time,” he said.
“I Can Only Imagine 2,” directed by Brent McCorkle and Andy Erwin and starring John Michael Finley, Milo Ventimiglia, Sophie Skelton, Arielle Kebbel, Sammy Dell, Trace Adkins, Dennis Quaid, releases in theaters February 20 from Kingdom Story Company and Lionsgate Studios.
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