Promo for faith-based comedy shot in Elgin goes online
Fox Valley residents who may have seen a crew filming "The Resurrection of Gavin Stone" last year can get a taste of the finished film in a promotional trailer that went online Thursday.
Director Dallas Jenkins said the faith-based film, made by a branch of the Harvest Bible Chapel, will be released nationwide Jan. 20. And it will be released with the help of, in what seems like a case of strange bedfellows, a branch of the WWE professional wrestling organization.
Jenkins manages the media department for the megachurch, which has branches in Elgin and Rolling Meadows. He also is executive director of its film branch, Vertical Church Films. The trailer can be seen on the "Vertical Church Films" Facebook page and @GavinStoneMovie on Twitter.
Jenkins said "Gavin Stone" will play in 800 to 1,000 theaters. "It will absolutely play in most of the theaters in the Chicago area. That's going to be a big focus for us, particularly in the suburbs close to our church campuses."
As for a gala premiere, Jenkins said, "We're not sure what that'll look like yet, but we'll be doing something big in January around Rolling Meadows and Elgin especially."
The movie stars Brett Dalton from TV's "Agents of SHIELD" as a washed-up former child actor who is arrested while visiting his hometown and is sentenced to community service at the local megachurch. Unhappy cleaning hallways with a mop, the egotistic actor talks his way into playing Jesus in the church's Easter play. He ends up bonding with the pastor's daughter (Anjelah Johnson from "Moms' Night Out") and tries to reconcile with his estranged father, played by Waukegan native Neil Flynn from TV's "The Middle."
The trailer shows lots of humorous scenes followed by some "heart."
"I've had 'The Passion of the Christ' for a while," the religiously indifferent Gavin tells the pastor's daughter as he tries to persuade her to cast him in the play for all the wrong reasons. Another scene shows him greedily crunching a mouthful of communion wafers. And when Johnson's character says "we don't want the credit" for something, Gavin says, "Hashtag - Things I Never Said to My Agent."
"The Resurrection of Gavin Stone" was shot last June inside Harvest's Elgin building, at a home on Monroe Street in Elgin, and in several other Fox Valley locations.
The movie also co-stars WWE wrestler Shawn Michaels, which is why WWE Studios announced last July the already-completed film would be released by that company, in cooperation with Vertical Church, Walden Media and BH Tilt.
Jenkins describes "Gavin Stone" as "relatively low-budget" and financed entirely by Hollywood investors, without putting Harvest Bible Chapel's own cash at risk. In 2014 he estimated $2 million would be needed to make the movie.
Jenkins is the son of Jerry Jenkins, former board chairman of Chicago's Moody Bible Institute and co-author of the best-selling "Left Behind" novels. After growing up in Deerfield and Zion and attending a Bible college in Minnesota, the younger Jenkins said he felt a call to bring the gospel message to the movie theater.
At 25 he moved to Los Angeles, "because that's where they make movies and I didn't believe the church in the Midwest was serious about bridging the gap between itself and popular culture."
In 2010, Jenkins directed "What If ...", an "It's a Wonderful Life"-style story about a rich playboy who sees what his life could have been like if he had centered it on God and family instead of money and pleasure. That film starred Kevin Sorbo, Kristy Swanson and John Ratzenberger. It played in some 200 theaters, including the Marcus Elgin, but grossed only $850,000.
Soon after it came out, Harvest Pastor James MacDonald hired Jenkins to become the church's media director.
Other films shot in Fox Valley
It's well known that the 1993 classic "Groundhog Day" was filmed at the Woodstock Town Square. But did you know that while waiting to film scenes for the movie "Hoffa" in 1992, Jack Nicholson shot golf balls into Bob Conro's cornfield near Hampshire and watched Los Angeles Lakers games inside a trailer parked on Elgin's Fountain Square? Some other movies shot in the Fox Valley include:
1980: "Four Friends." Directed by Arthur Penn of "Bonnie and Clyde" fame, scenes shot in and around the Woodruff & Edwards foundry in Elgin.
1991: "Dutch." Ed O'Neill came to a truck stop in Hampshire in below-zero weather to film some scenes for this John Hughes-produced work.
1993: "Dennis the Menace." John Hughes' company shot some scenes along Poplar Creek, along the border between Elgin and Hoffman Estates.
2002: "Road to Perdition." Tom Hanks and Jude Law acted in major robbery and shooting scenes in downtown West Dundee and downtown Geneva.
2002: "Joshua." Filmed almost entirely in East Dundee and Carpentersville, this indie had Tony Goldwyn playing a Jesus-like character in an 1800s small town, and Oscar winner F. Murray Abraham as an evil priest.
2005: "The Ice Harvest." Directed by Harold Ramis and starring John Cusack, a scene in a driving rainstorm was filmed on Carpentersville's Main Street Bridge.
2008: "The Lucky Ones." Timothy Robbins and Rachel McAdams shot scenes in a house along the Elgin-Hoffman Estates border.
2009: "Public Enemy." Starring Johnny Depp, the Paramount Theatre in Aurora was the setting to flash a mug shot of John Dillinger while warning patrons to be on the lookout for the gangster.
2010: "A Nightmare on Elm Street." This horror remake begins with a funeral shot at Elgin's Bluff City Cemetery.
2011: "Contagion." Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon and Laurence Fishburne acted in scenes in and around the shuttered original Sherman Hospital in Elgin.
2011: "Munger Road." Young local filmmaker Nicholas Smith got Bruce Davison to play the St. Charles police chief in this mystery thriller based on a local urban legend, filmed entirely in and around St. Charles during its Scarecrow Fest.
- Dave Gathman