Alan Ritchson, the Christian Hollywood star who played Jack Reacher in Reacher and Gloss in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, recently spoke about his passion for inspirational content and wants faith-based films to succeed at the box office, saying “I want to be a part of stories like that.”
And he is being part of such movies. Ritchson is the lead in an upcoming faith-based movie Ordinary Angels, the true story of a widowed father and his facing a medical crisis and a single mom who rallied a church to help them. The film was made by the same company that produced Jesus Revolution. It will be released on October 13th. IMBD, describing the film, said that Ordinary Angels was “Inspired by the incredible true story of a hairdresser who single-handedly rallies an entire community to help a widowed father save the life of his critically ill young daughter.”
Speaking about the film in a Zoom prayer call with the cast and crew of the film, saying, “God continually shows up in our world in a way that kind of boggles our mind. Because we, for whatever reason, I think we continue to buy into the idea that … God chooses heroes to do His work.”
Continuing, Ritchson went on to say, “And it’s just never been the case. It’s the broken and the dysfunctional that God proves His power and strength through. And this a story of that, too. It’s important that we remember that those who maybe struggle to follow the rules, who don’t look like the perfect Christians, who are the broken, are the people that God has a funny way of expressing Himself through. And that story is very much told in Ordinary Angels.”
Continuing, he said that while many of Hollywood’s executives are concerned only with a film’s bottom line, faith-based films can succeed by that metric and, regardless, once they’re produced and released the intent of the executives “doesn’t change the fact that people are hearing the name of Christ in movie theaters.”
Then, emphasizing the importance of that and why it’s important to ensure that Christian films get made and then supported by audiences, Ritchson said, “And if that’s where the pulpit is for people who wouldn’t normally step foot in a church, then that’s still a great way to have that conversation … It matters that these films get supported.”
When Christian audiences do support faith-based movies, Ritchson added, “Other people in [Hollywood] watch this and a groundswell kind of takes place in Hollywood that changes things in a real meaningful way.”
Ritchson isn’t the only one talking about faith-based movies recently. Olympic gold-medal-winning boxer George Foreman did as well, saying, “‘Evangelistic’ is the word that has been so powerful to me in my life. If something happened to me tomorrow … I know I’ve done a good job, and I’m happy about that, trying to spell out to the world, ‘Jesus Christ has come alive in me,’”
He added, “So many people helped me in life. I didn’t know that. I thought I was doing so much … but there are so many good people in my life.”
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