Over the Labor Day weekend (Sept. 4-7), the faith-based family drama War Room exceeded expectations by earning $12.6 million from 1,526 locations and taking the top spot of box office sales. It also opened as the #1 faith-based movie of 2015 and the highest in the genre since Heaven Is for Real (in April 2014).
War Room is the fifth film from Alex and Stephen Kendrick (Courageous, Fireproof, Facing the Giants, Flywheel), and has enjoyed media coverage from outlets such as Associated Press, Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, Forbes, USA Today, Entertainment Tonight, CBS, FOX News, and others.
Actor/writer/director Alex Kendrick and his brother, producer/co-writer Stephen Kendrick, did exactly what one would expect devout Christians to do when it came to their latest film: they prayed for it to succeed. “We didn’t wake up one day wanting to make a movie about a 75-year-old woman’s prayer closet,” Stephen explains. “We asked God to order our steps, and the ideas came. As filmmakers, we’re laying tracks before a moving train.”
“People have plans for everything in life: careers, finances, health. But what about a strategy for prayer to affect our lives, our spouses, and our children?” Alex asks. “We want to inspire, challenge, and motivate families to not just react but to plan through the right kind of battles—and to use the best resources possible.”
Adds Stephen: “We’re after something here to radically improve our culture, and we want moviegoers to experience it in an inspiring and emotional story. Prayer outstrips anything people realize. Growing up with a praying mom and dad, we saw prayer prompt answers in relevant, powerful ways. As teenagers, too, we saw the Lord at work. And slowly, slowly we began to build and go into our own prayer closets.”
And this habit, this commitment, the Kendricks say, is the secret to their film’s remarkable impact. War Room is distributed by Sony’s TriStar Pictures with marketing by Provident Films and AFFIRM Films (warroommovie.com).
