These days, the Southeastern U.S. is famous for all of its ‘home makeover’ TV shows, but the Kendrick Brothers (producers of Courageous, Fireproof, War Room, The Forge, etc..) just got a chance to do a ‘makeover’ on their first film, Flywheel. And it will be in Portuguese!
Stephen Kendrick explains how it came about. “When we were promoting The Forge, I was invited to come speak at a church in Brazil, Recreio Church in Rio. They had a creative pastor, Gustavo Faleiro who invited me up on the stage. And he said, ‘I speak English and I speak Portuguese. I can translate for you.’ So I sat down next to him. And he turned to me and he said, “We will support this new movie, The Forge.’ He said, ‘I haven’t seen it yet, but our church trusts you.’ And that meant so much to me because I’m in a foreign country, and he said, ‘God has used your previous films in our lives, and we will support this one. “
“When we first talked to Ygor Siqueira, at 360 WayUp, who was our contact who had helped us promote and release our previous films that were dubbed in Portuguese,” Alex adds. “And he said, “Hey, would you consider coming down here and shooting a film and training some of our young Christian filmmakers that would love to make feature films in a way that glorifies the Lord?’ And he said, “What if you re-shot your original Flywheel movie that really didn’t have a theatrical release?’ And Stephen and I started praying about that and instantly we had a peace and we called and we said, ‘Okay, we’re willing to at least take a step in that direction. We’ll have to pray and ask the Lord to provide.”
Stephen adds,”We go to Sony and we share with Sony and Sony says ‘We’ll fund it.’ And so we were like, ‘Wow, that was a quick yes! So we went down there, met with Ygor. He put the word out, and instantly people started showing up that were the cast and the crew that we needed, and believers. We did a week long boot camp, sharing with them how we operate, and saying, ‘This is not a Hollywood movie. We do it differently, but we want the same level of excellence in production.”
The brothers did a casting call, and God seemed to be orchestrating every detail. Alex adds, “We had 130, I think, show up at that. And then we started shooting the movie, we cast, and man, the Lord brought the cast we needed. We shot all over Rio de Janeiro and the surrounding regions,” Alex adds. “There were between 150 to 200 pastors that came and met with us, prayed over us. At the end of one of the pastor’s meetings, a guy walks up to us and says ‘My family has been in the car business for 60 years. You can use my car lot for your movie,” he says.
When asked how Flywheel; Ignition of the Soul compares to the original Flywheel, both brothers laugh. “Oh, it’s many times better. I’m so grateful that it’s such a better (production) quality movie. The actors are also better than when we made the first movie,” Stephen says.
“We were shocked at the life God gave that first film, released over 20 years ago. It sold over a a million DVDs. It has been on multiple television networks. And it’s weird how many people said they when started watching it, they were not impressed with it at all. But once they got 10 minutes in, they couldn’t turn it off. “
When asked if there were many script changes from the original, Stephen says, “We got together with some Brazilian Christian writers, went through the whole script, updated where it needed to be updated, used different jokes, different expressions. So we would update the script that way and make sure that it fit the Brazilian and Portuguese culture”
Flywheel: Ignition of the Soul stars Brazilian actors Mario Bregieira and Perola Faria in the lead roles, and will be released in the U.S. on October 16th.
—Randy Rudder has worked as a producer for CBN Nashville,
a college English professor, author, and entertainment journalist
