Where you can go to see it
“The Case for Christ” is showing at five area theaters (subject to change).› AMC Chattanooga 18, 5080 S. Terrace in East Ridge› AMC Northgate 14, 310 Northgate Mall drive in Hixson› AMC Classic Battlefield 10, 1099 Battlefield Parkway in Fort Oglethorpe› AMC Bradley Square 12, 200 Paul Huff Parkway in Cleveland› UEC Theatres 14, 137 Pleasant Grove Road SW in Cleveland
CHICAGO - Before breakfast at Sixteen, a restaurant in the Trump International Hotel and Tower the morning after the premiere for the film "The Case for Christ," David A.R. White and Andrea Logan White requested a pause.
"Hold on, I want to say grace," David White said to this reporter, whose mouth was already stuffed full of bacon. "Bless us, Lord, thanks so much for this day," he went on, concluding: "I love you. Thanks so much for the movie."
The disconnect between the mainstream news media and evangelical Christians is also a major theme of "The Case for Christ." Based on the best-selling book written by Lee Strobel, a former journalist at The Chicago Tribune, the movie depicts his process of going from a hard-nosed newsman and atheist to a devout Christian and minister.
It was produced by Pure Flix, a faith-based entertainment production and distribution company in Scottsdale, Ariz., that David White helped found in 2005. In June 2015, the company introduced an on-demand streaming service. While Netflix denizens devour series such as "13 Reasons Why" and "Breaking Bad," PureFlix.com offers bingeable programming such as "The American Bible Challenge," a game show hosted by Jeff Foxworthy; "Family Affair," a sitcom starring Brian Keith that ran from 1966-71; "The Encounter," a Pure Flix original scripted series about people who are visited by Jesus; and stand-up comedy from Sinbad and Louie Anderson. Next up is "Hilton Head Island," a soap opera starring Antonio Sabato Jr. It also streams sermons and documentaries for parents who home-school.
Last month, PureFlix.com had nearly 715,000 unique visitors, according to Alexa, a website traffic analytics company. Greg Gudorf, chief executive of PureFlix.com, said the service's nearly 250,000 paying subscribers could choose from a catalog of more than 7,500 titles.
"We've been blessed with really strong growth," he said.
White, whose book, "Between Heaven and Hollywood," was published last fall by Zonverdan, wants to make films, sitcoms and serialized dramas with family-friendly or religious messages.
"Our God-given dream was to provide content on a consistent basis to be an alternative to what Hollywood was putting out," he said.
White, who was raised a Mennonite in rural Kansas, saw just one secular film in a theater before he turned 18. ("The Mennonites make the Mormons look like a pack of Hell's Angels," he said.) A friend's parents took him to see "Grease," and "when Olivia Newton-John came out in black tights and I thought for sure I was going to hell," he said.
This was enough to persuade him to drop out of Bible college after one year. His goal was to serve God through acting, but then he became interested in production, too. Pure Flix has made hundreds of films ("Do You Believe?" starring Cybill Shepherd), sitcoms, serialized dramas and web series including "On the White Track," which stars White and his wife.
On-demand services allow Christians of different disciplines to find content that speaks to their individual interests and beliefs. A theatrical feature film can be a tougher sell to a religious population with many different denominations.
"In the Christian faith, there are divisions with all the sects," White said. "The Baptists won't talk to the Assemblies of God. You have your charismatic Christians. You have your ultraconservatives, like Southern Baptists. You have Catholicism. They're all a little different." But, he added, invoking the Rev. Billy Graham, "The foot of the cross is level ground."
The 2014 Pure Flix theatrical release "God's Not Dead" found the level ground. It earned more than $60 million at the box office. (White was a star of the film, and it features Korie and Willie Robertson of "Duck Dynasty.")
"The Case for Christ" also focuses on a theme that binds all Christians, the resurrection of Jesus. Set in 1980 and decked out with the cars, pastel clothes, handlebar mustaches and smoky newsrooms that conjure the dawn of Reagan's America, the movie was filmed over six weeks in Atlanta and cost more than $4 million to make.
It stars Mike Vogel (recently of the Syfy network's miniseries "Childhood's End"), the Tony-winning actress L. Scott Caldwell and Erika Christensen (known for her six-season work on the NBC show "Parenthood"). There are cameos from Robert Forster and Faye Dunaway.
On the film's marketing poster, Vogel's character gazes at a red Time magazine cover from 1966 that asks, "Is God Dead?" (As it happens, Time repurposed the cover for a March 2017 edition, but the modern-day headline read, "Is Truth Dead?")
Thanks to President Donald Trump's popularity among evangelicals and discussions of "fake news" abounding on the internet, the film has considerable resonance.
"If you watch CNN or Fox, you feel like it's two different worlds," said Michael Scott, a founder of Pure Flix and a producer of the film. "Here, you have something similar, you have an atheistic journalist investigating the claims for Christ. There are some similarities even though it was taking place more than 30 years ago."
Brian Bird, the film's writer, was an executive producer of "Touched by an Angel" and worked on programs including "Step by Step" and "Evening Shade," the Burt Reynolds sitcom that was broadcast on CBS from 1990-94. When he was in his early 20s, David White had a recurring role on "Evening Shade" until he stuffed a pillow under his shirt and did an impersonation of Reynolds in front of the studio audience before filming an episode. Reynolds turned his rings around and smacked White on the ear with his open palm. White was subsequently fired.
Now Reynolds plays White's father on a new sitcom Pure Flix is trying to shop to the networks, a 10-episode season of which has already been shot. In "Hitting the Breaks," White plays a former racecar driver who moves with his family from Atlanta to a small town in Colorado, where he has inherited a bed-and-breakfast, the Serenity Inn. His real-life wife plays his wife on the show. Morgan Fairchild, Rob Schneider and Tim Tebow have guest-starred.
The Whites would also like to star in a reality show. After the success of "God's Not Dead" in 2014, they took meetings with network executives but the discussions went nowhere.
"I think the climate is different now," David White said of producing a reality show based on an evangelical Christian family. "I think it eventually will happen."
Pure Flix executives are also building a strategy to attract a secular audience so that its content is not mere "preaching to the converted," said Alysoun Wolfe, another of the company's partners.
This fall, Pure Flix will release in theaters "Same Kind of Different as Me," starring Greg Kinnear and Renée Zellweger and featuring Jon Voight. It also has been filming "Samson," starring Rutger Hauer, Jackson Rathbone, Lindsay Wagner and Billy Zane, in South Africa. And Wolfe, with Scott, is focusing on the start of Epiphany, a production partner to Pure Flix whose subtler brand name is intended to avoid alienating non-Christians.
"We need to reach a broader audience," Wolfe said, "because we want to get the moral lessons out."