Rick Santorum, former U.S. senator and GOP presidential candidate, is now CEO of EchoLight Studios, the first movie company to produce, finance, market and distribute faith-based, family films across all releasing platforms.
EchoLight’s upcoming first theatrical, THE REDEMPTION OF HENRY MYERS, is slated for a fall 2013 release. Meanwhile, EchoLight’s second theatrical is in post-production, a film based on the inspiring story of Illinois basketball player Eric “Hoovey” Elliott, starring Patrick Warburton and Lauren Holly, and directed by SOUL SURFER’s Sean McNamara, to release in 2014. “This is the right place and right time, and I’ve jumped in with both feet,” Santorum said, having spent the past year helping EchoLight develop and grow. “I often say that culture is upstream from politics, and I know entertainment also can be strength and light for people who want to be uplifted and reinforced in their values.”
Santorum has high expectations for blowing open a burgeoning entertainment category. “Dallas can become the Hollywood of the faith-and-family movie market. And the keys are great content and economic success,” he said, “using money from all over to build out the industry and distribute an authentic product truthful to the faith in people’s lives.”
EchoLight’s commitment to new filmmakers already has impressive numbers:
* a $250,000 commitment to produce and distribute a new work by the winner of the Short Film category in the 2013 San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival
* a multi-year, multi-million agreement to produce films from Liberty University’s Cinematic Arts program with production wrapped on the first film from that effort
* up to $1 million pledged to produce and distribute a new work from the Best Film winner in this year’s 168 Film Project.
“What I found out in politics is that the culture does more to shape American politics than politicians do,” Santorum told Christian Post. “That the popular culture in particular, as we become more and more engrossed in our video apparatus, whether our iPhones or our iPads or television or movies screens, computers all of that is now much more influencing the direction of our country.”
Santorum told Huffington Post that there is a huge, untapped audience that is just waiting for more faith-based movies: “You have millions of Americans who don’t go to the movies because they don’t want to see, and they don’t want their children seeing, certain content.”
EchoLight has a full pipeline of films with established directors and a growing cadre of “faith and family” stars as committed as the directors and producers. “We’re in a position with potential to transform the industry,” Santorum said. “EchoLight is a wide door into movie excellence and to more of it–which is why we’re also helping to cultivate young filmmakers in the faith community, helping them develop cinema that, in many, many ways, can go further and do more.”