Courageous was released to 1,161 theaters on September 30, 2011 and had the best opening of all new movies released that weekend, beating out The Lion King 3D, Moneyball, Dolphin Tale and Drive. It grossed $2,000,000 in pre-sales alone and grossed $9.1 million total for the weekend. Directed by Alex Kendrick, the film was produced with a $2,000,000 budget.
According to the Sherwood Pictures website, "Through prayer, we see God's plans for themes, scripts, plot lines, casting, volunteers, and every other aspect of movie making." The church's mission is to "Touch the whole world with the whole word."
Senior Pastor Michael Catt, Executive Pastor Jim McBride, and ministers Stephen and Alex Kendrick want others to learn about the film's intent. “The movie is about fatherhood and the title is one word: COURAGEOUS,” Alex Kendrick said.
“The statistics on fatherless children are devastating,” McBride said. “And because the family is the building block of society, one important place to rebuild families is through fathers who stay and lead and love.”
Roughly half of the cast are volunteers from Sherwood Baptist Church, but the other half were through invitation-only audition sessions. Sherwood Baptist Church is a megachurch in Whispering Pines, a subdivision of Albany with over 2,000 attendants; however, this number places it among the smallest of referenced "megachurches". Courageous is the church's fourth movie.
The plot of their latest movie centers on the Albany, Ga. police force's attempts to stop drug smuggling in the city. The sheriff urges his deputies to spend time with their families based on statistics that fatherless children are several times more likely than those with fathers to turn to lives of crime.
The film's climax happens at a Father's Day church service. Mitchell, one of the main characters, urges fathers in the congregation to influence their families for God. The film ends with a portion of Joshua 24:15: "...[C]hoose you this day whom you will serve... but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord."
To learn more about Sherwood Pictures, go to: http://www.sherwoodpictures.com/. To watch movie trailer, click on link to the right of this article.
Portions of this article taken from Wikipedia provided under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
©2011 Tomi Johnson. All rights reserved.
Robert Stromberg says: This is an awesome movie. Several of our local church's black men and children went opening day. It was an awesome experience for the men.
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