Stepping out with their Easter best in recent weeks, producers of faith-centered movies have gotten lucky in the hunt for box-office gold. Two of last week’s top 10 were geared to Christian audiences, with I Can Only Imagine now at $38 million. Hollywood studios have invested heavily to stand out in this competitive market.

Pure Flix has charted its own course — an independent studio financed and run by people of faith. David A.R. White, a guest star on 90’s TV shows like Coach, discovered his niche with faith-based films and co-founded the studio in 2005. Early low-budget Pure Flix movies were clearly a learning experience. They made it onto Hollywood’s radar in 2014 with God’s Not Dead, an unexpected $60 million hit.

With experience and investment, production values and storytelling at the indie studio have been rising. Pure Flix has had some flops in the risky moviemaking biz — notably Samson only weeks ago. Now White and his team are changing up their golden franchise with God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness, releasing Friday.

Veteran actor John Corbett (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) co-stars in a film decidedly less hostile to nonbelievers than previous entries. Stuck in traffic after a Hollywood press junket, David A.R. White spoke with The Stream in a phone interview.

Setting Fire to Clichés

The Stream: This latest film is a threequel to the studio’s biggest hit, God’s Not Dead. How is it different from that film?

David A.R. White: The first God’s Not Dead film was really about faith being challenged on a college campus. The second movie was about truth being challenged in the public square. In trying to land on a story for this third entry, we asked: What makes this relevant? We knew we wanted it to be able to stand alone.

Over the past decade, we’ve been living in a very divisive social-political time. How do you make a movie that addresses that divisiveness and tries to help fix it? Hopefully, this film can be a conduit to the beginning of a healing process.

The Stream: Early on, the drama is heightened when a massive fire erupts and two characters are trapped. How did that sequence come together?

White: In the scene, I’m trying to pull my buddy out of this church that is — spoiler alert — burning down. How do you do a burning church without burning down an actual church? That’s some of the movie magic. We wanted viewers to be able to feel it. We didn’t want it to be solely a CGI fire, though some effects were added later.

That sequence was filmed over several days. They got these massive pyrotechnic devices that use jet fuel. We lit up a warehouse, staged to be the church basement. Outside, in a different location, we built part of a church and we lit that up. We shot that exterior part in the winter, with rain coming down.

Trying to drag a 200 lb. man is a hard thing for anybody to do. To pull this dead weight up a set of stairs, with flames all around me — it was scary at times. The temperatures were upwards of 130 degrees near that fire. You just want to get away from it. I feel for all those people on Backdraft.

Days later, we were out in the freezing cold with water falling while the fire is still blazing. The fire was our friend at that point! It was a complicated scene.

When Brothers Become Distant Relatives

The Stream: The character of your brother, a successful lawyer, is a source of conflict. Could you share about filming those scenes and the rivalry you have?

White: I play a pastor in this movie, and, ironically, my brother is an atheist. That’s real life. So often, even though you’re from the same family and grow up the same way, a lot of times our siblings are different from us. Our friends are different than us. They have different values, different ways of looking at the world.

It was fun to have John Corbett from All Saints play such a big part. He was a perfect fit for my older brother, and we got along like brothers. He would needle me and stuff. We had a great time, and I think that shows on-screen.

The Stream: How does this story go a different direction than the first two films?

White: The first two God’s Not Dead movies were special in their own right. They were really great at opening up discussion on big issues.

With this one, we really felt like — in the time we’re at as a nation — people just want authenticity. They don’t want to be preached at. They don’t want you to just tell them how it’s supposed to be, or hit you over the head with what you’re supposed to do. They want to see a real-life example.

I have a brother who’s seven years older. Our relationship has not been the best over the years; we’ve been estranged in a lot of ways. Writer/director Michael Mason has an older brother, and he’s definitely gone through a lot of that. You bring wherever you’re from and your backstory of real life into the filmmaking.

There are many times life doesn’t go like we think it should or we want it to. There’s a lot of loss. Many characters go through a lot in this movie — but that’s life. I think the struggles and pain are what people will connect with.

‘It’s Why People Still Go to Movies’

The Stream: You’ve now starred in and produced dozens of films with Pure Flix. How has the studio evolved in its approach?

White: I’d like to believe we’re getting better and better at it! That’s the hope. Our goal is to make films that uplift and inspire the human spirit, that bring people into higher levels of insight to who God is and the purpose that he has for their lives. If we can do that through the powerful medium of film, we’ve achieved something.

It separates us from a lot of other studios. Even though we’ve done about 50 movies, everything is still new with every project. There are new situations you come upon, and you roll with it. You do what you can with whatever you have to work with.

The Stream: The studio’s other big hit was The Case for Christ, currently on Netflix. Why do you think mainstream critics gave it more positive reviews?

If you’re being authentic, trying to show both sides in a way that is fair and balanced, people respond to it.

White: First, the acting was terrific in The Case for Christ. It was a great script based on a true story. Authenticity is what people want. If you do that, people will respond favorably — whether or not they agree with what you’re saying.

If you’re being authentic, trying to show both sides in a way that is fair and balanced, people respond to it. That’s a problem with the press today: a lot of people don’t feel it’s accurate, and that creates people not agreeing. People argue and yell, getting madder and madder. Everybody’s angry, but nobody’s listening.

The Stream: As faith-centered movies continue to proliferate, some may question the eternal value of producing costly films. How do you respond?

White: We live in a sight and sound generation. Our culture is impacted by the media. Many people won’t listen to a pastor, they won’t go to church and they’re not going to read their Bible.

What will they do? You go into a dark theater, and you allow a movie to take you to places that you wouldn’t even allow your best friend to take you. I think that’s the beauty of cinema. It’s why people make movies. It’s why we still go to movies. We want that escapism, in one sense.

When we make these movies and they go out around the world, the responses we get from people are overwhelming. You can read more e-mails, tweets, letters and Facebook messages from these films that anything else I’ve ever done in my life.

What we’ve found in this marketplace is that people are hungry for answers. People want to explore the heavier, harder subjects. What these movies are trying to do is open a discussion that says, It’s okay to talk about it. Even whether or not they agree with our ideas, audiences have these questions. So let’s talk about it.

Released by Pure Flix Entertainment, God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness opens in theaters nationwide on March 30. Watch the latest trailer: