Former Senator Rick Santorum's film company announced on Monday that it would be distributing its movies not through the traditional box office but through churches.
EchoLight Studios, which released last year's adaptation of Max Lucado's The Christmas Candle, told Deadline that the studio made the decision as a strategic attempt to draw the masses into churches.
"We want to be a part of empowering the church to elevate its role as a cultural change agent," EchoLight President Studios Jeff Sheets said in a statement. "Our vision is not to create sermons wrapped in a movie but to create content that inspires, fascinates and incorporates a strong Christian worldview."
The Franklin, TN-based studio, which intends to release four films a year, wants both the film's message and financial profits to support churches. Consequently, EchoLight hopes to create movies which can also have a "strong ministry value as tools for the Church to use in their in-reach and outreach ministries," whose proceeds will partially "fuel the missional needs of the hosting local church."
Tickets for the studio's next film, One Generation Away, will go on sale on June 1. The studio will also re-release The Christmas Candle, which grossed $2 million over seven weeks last winter. Later this year, EchoLight will also release Hoovey, directed by Sean McNamara, who was also behind the camera in Soul Surfer.
Hoovey, starring Patrick Warburton and Lauren Holly and includes Disney Channel alums Cody Linley and Alyson Stoner, is based on the true story of a high school basketball player Eric Hoover Elliott diagnosed with a massive brain tumor.
