Trailer Released for HEAVENQUEST: A Pilgrim’s Progress Released
King Street Pictures has premiered the new trailer for HEAVENQUEST: A Pilgrim’s Progress. The film will release exclusively on Heavenquestfilm.com for a special 48-hour digital premiere launch on October 25. This allows fans to experience the full story three months prior to its traditional worldwide release in January 2020. The film was birthed when visionary filmmaker Matt Bilen approached Executive Producer Darren Wilson (FATHER OF LIGHTS, HOLY GHOST) with a grand idea for a faith-based, fantasy film.
“Over the last decade, Matt has been by my side creating documentaries. It was no surprise that he would attempt something as outlandish and ambitious as HEAVENQUEST for his first feature,” Wilson explains. “He broke nearly every rule for first time directors: don’t make a film without a substantial budget, don’t shoot at night, don’t shoot in hard to reach locations, don’t shoot without a script, don’t make a fantasy film that requires elaborate costumes, extras, Visual Effects, etc. People who fearlessly break artistic rules are the ones who are forced to birth something unique. Matt’s passion for the story will resonate with all who see the film.”
“I wanted to do something different in the faith-film space and felt building a new, immersive fantasy world around the characters and setting of The Pilgrim’s Progress would allow me to push some boundaries,” shares Bilen. “Using Bunyan’s classic storyline allowed us to build a world where we could tell something relevant and gritty that would resonate with contemporary audiences.”
Bunyan wrote The Pilgrim’s Progress in 1678 while in prison for holding religious services. One of the first English novels, The Pilgrim’s Progress has never been out of print, it has been translated into more than 200 languages, and is the second most-read book after the Bible.
HEAVENQUEST is an imagined prequel to Bunyan’s original text, exploring the origins of the character The Evangelist (renamed Vangel). During the war between the Northern and Southern Kingdoms of Eos, Vangel is arrested, brought to the Southern King and sentenced to death, Vangel escapes and flees North. Armed only with a book called The Record of the Ancients that he receives from a wise sage, Vangel embarks on an adventure through haunted forests, dark swamps, and enchanted mountains. Along the way, mysterious travel companions assist him, sharing about a fabled good king and pushing him onwards towards the Wicket Gate, the gateway to the North, while enemies lurk at every corner trying to derail him from his path.
A true experiment in filmmaking, Bilen achieved the impossible in creating his feature-length directorial debut: he made a faith-inspired epic fantasy film with only micro-budget; a few crew members; a diverse international cast; extreme outdoor locations with THE REVENANT style time-of-day natural lighting; and no script other than a working treatment. The filmmakers were also intentional in securing an international cast who had already been impacted by the story, including actors from Korea, Mexico, Australia, and the US.
To learn more about HEAVENQUEST, please see Heavenquestfilm.com.
(SOURCE: Biscuit Media Group via Christian Newswire)
