by Allie Martin and Jody Brown
A new movie has been released which carries an evangelistic message through time travel.
Time Changer, which hits theaters this weekend, centers around a seminary professor who is sent 100 years into the future where he witnesses firsthand the result of writings a colleague says could have detrimental effects on society. With a budget of less than a million dollars, the film features veteran actors Gavin MacLeod (Love Boat), Hal Linden (Barney Miller), Jennifer O'Neill (Summer of '42), and comedian/actor Paul Rodriguez. The main character is played by D. David Morin, an accomplished but relatively unknown actor who recommitted his life to Christ a couple of years ago.
The movie is written and directed by Christian filmmaker Rich Christiano, who says he has waited 16 years for the opportunity to produce a theatrical film with a very open and challenging spiritual message. The wait has ended, he says.
“It's a time travel movie about a seminary Bible professor who's written a book, and the publisher wants the seminary to endorse the book,” Christiano explains. “But one of the professors has trouble with something written [in the book], and he has a time machine which he uses to send the [author] to the present time so he can see where his thinking leads.”
Time Changer opens on approximately 170 screens this weekend, and Christiano says Christians have a chance to support a movie that can be a powerful witnessing tool.
“We've got to get Christians to turn out in droves so that we do such good numbers that we'll get a lot of national press — because Time Changer is going to come out of left field,” he says. “It's all about the numbers, and if we can have what's called a good 'per-screen-average' [number of tickets purchased per screen], we'll get tons of national press — which will then help us in future weeks.”
According to Christiano, Christian films have often been made fun of in the past because of their low budgets. But the veteran filmmaker notes that millions of people worldwide have been influenced to follow Christ as a result of watching Christian movies. He says the quality of those productions continues to increase — and he believes it is time that genre of films gets wider appeal and “is taken a little more seriously.”
(This article courtesy of Agape Press.)
