Facing The Giants
The cast, composed of volunteers from a local church, includes Shannon Fields, James Blackwell, Bailey Cave, and Tracy Goode. The film relates an underdog story about American football from an Evangelical Christian worldview.
The film made its television debut on September 21, 2008, on TBN.
Cast
Shiloh Eagles in formation.
Mark Richt, head football coach at the University of Georgia, makes a cameo. As presented in the film, Coach Taylor played college football under Richt.
As Coach Taylor was at SCA for six years, it would have been impossible for him to play college football at the University of Georgia after 2000, when Coach Richt became head coach. Also, a news report from WALB features then-sports anchor Kevin McDermond in a brief cameo.
Production
Coach Taylor encourages the Eagles.
The movie was shot on high definition digital video tape (using the Panasonic Varicam) and transferred to film. Using real high school football teams, the football action sequences were shot by the film's director of photography, Bob Scott, who is a veteran cinematographer for NFL Films.
Though never mentioned in the media, there is enough evidence to suggest that the role of J.T. was written for Georgia native Bruce Bruce.
Soundtrack
The church music minister, Mark Willard, wrote the film score.
The film also uses seven Christian pop songs from Third Day, Casting Crowns, Bebo Norman, Ana Laura, Josh Bates and Mark Willard. There are five tracks of original score during the soundtrack.
Third Day's distributor is Provident Label Group, which is associated with Provident Films, Sony and Samuel Goldwyn Pictures.
A routine request for permission led to the national release of the film.
Official listing
Come Together - Mac Powell
Voice of Truth - Mark Hall
Facing the Giants Theme (Score) - Mark Willar
I'm Finding You - Bebo Norman
The Deathcrawl (Score) - Mark Willard
Completely - West, Matthew
A Gift from God (Score) - Mark Willard
Come on Back to Me - Mac Powell
Never Give Up on Me - Josh Bates
The Fight (Score) - Mark Willard
With You - Mark Willard
Attempting the Impossible (Score) - Mark Willard
Reception
Box office
In its first weekend, the film opened on 441 screens nationwide in the United States. Despite such a small number of theaters, the film opened in twelfth place with $1,343,537. Only three films in the top ten released that weekend grossed more per theater.
For such a small budget — $100,000 — the film ultimately was shown in over 1,000 theaters and grossed over $10,000,000 as of 2007-01-01.
Reviews
The film only earned a 9% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes with 3 positive reviews out of 23 reviews counted and a 38/100 score at Metacritic. Some critics complained that characters confronting problems from an explicitly Christian worldview belonged in church rather than portrayed in film. It jumps back and forth between football and various other subplots…"
Counter to the foregoing, "the script unfortunately devolves into cliché and cant, other aspects of the movie are quite good — so good, in fact, that Facing the Giants shames the efforts of a lot of better-financed moviemakers." Also in favor of the film, "Here's a badly acted movie with a terrific story line that makes it well worth seeing….
Still, its 'all-volunteer' cast does not ruin its well-written, compelling script and believable dialogue."
Rating controversy
In May 2006, the producers of Facing the Giants received notice from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) that the film would be receiving a "Parental Guidance Suggested" rating, or "PG" rating. One of the film's consultants, Mark Joseph, who had also conducted media strategy for films such as The Chronicles of Narnia and The Passion of The Christ and had unsuccessfully lobbied Walden Media to release Giants, alerted The Drudge Report which picked up the story on June 8, 2006. Within hours the story was a hot topic in religious and conservative media, outraging many who believed the MPAA was entering uncharted territory by allowing the religious content of a film to influence ratings decisions.
In the ensuing days the story garnered media attention in countless media outlets like the New York Times, Good Morning America, Fox News and countless talk radio programs.
According to the film's producers, they were originally told the motion picture received a "PG" rating because of its strong religious themes and because it elevated one religion over another. The MPAA later countered that Facing the Giants contains football violence and also deals with the mature topics of infertility and depression, thus warranting the higher rating and initially denied that religious themes were an issue.