Two of the best scriptwriters in the movie business are two Baptist brothers, Alex and Stephen Kendrick. At the Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Ga., Alex teaches and runs the church's media center, including their film production company, Sherwood Pictures, and Stephen serves as senior associate pastor. Sony Provident, a subsidiary of Sony Pictures Entertainment, one of the six major studios in Hollywood, picked up their second movie, "Facing The Giants." "Facing The Giants" went on to become the No. 1 movie among all those in North America released in fewer than 500 theaters!

On Sept. 26, Sony will release "Fireproof," the Kendrick brothers and Sherwood Pictures' next movie, starring Kirk Cameron and Erin Bethea, in double the number of theaters compared to "Facing The Giants."

MOVIEGUIDE® recently conducted an exclusive interview with the Kendrick brothers about their new movie, their career so far, their walk with Jesus and their church.

For more information about "Fireproof," please go to www.fireproofthemovie.com. Although it will be released in many theaters, there are still some cities where the movie hasn't been booked. Readers can visit that website to learn how to convince local theaters to carry "Fireproof" beginning on Sept. 26.

MOVIEGUIDE®: What is the story about in the new one?

Alex Kendrick: "Fireproof" is about marriage, and it centers around a couple, Caleb and Catherine Holt. They've been married seven years, and their marriage has come to an end. Right before they get a divorce, Caleb's father, who is a Christian, comes to see him and challenges him to hold off on the divorce for 40 days. Caleb is reluctant to do so, but his dad tells him, "I need that time 'cause I'm going to send you something in the mail that's called The Love Dare." What comes in the mail a couple days later is a hand-written journal from his father daring him to demonstrate an aspect of love every day for 40 days, even though he doesn't feel like it. That takes Caleb on a journey where he discovers that he really has never known exactly how to love his wife. He handles issues that are very common in marriages today and gives them biblical solutions. ... So, we have in this story, firefighter Caleb who not only learns how to save lives on the job, but also learns how to rescue part of his life. That's going to resonate with a lot of people.

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MOVIEGUIDE®: What made you guys decide to focus on this particular subject, and how did you come up with this particular story?

Stephen: After "Facing The Giants" had been spread all over the world (it's in 56 countries and 13 languages), we were overwhelmed by its impact on churches and on football teams. They were embracing a "never give up" mentality. They were inspired in their faith and in whatever else they were working on.

So Alex and I began to pray for the next story line, specifically asking God for something that would impact the fiber of our culture. The Lord led us back to deal with the issue of marriage, with it being the core relationship that God started with and that He uses to build the foundation for children, families and, ultimately, churches and government as well. That relationship needs to be strong.

So we began to realize as we studied Scripture that marriage is supposed to be a covenant, not a contract. It's supposed to be a picture of Christ and his bride, the church. It's supposed to be really an environment that's ideal for someone to learn how to love an imperfect person unconditionally. That's God's desire for us, to learn that in the context of marriage.

We decided to go after that issue. You know, you rarely see your romantic comedies involving married couples. It's usually two people meeting, falling in love or there's some kind of attraction, a lot of times they're sleeping around, get in a big fight, and then at the end of the movie they reconcile the fight. We wanted to show what people really are for the most part. A lot of people are in a marriage, and the romance has faded away. They're trying to figure out if they've made the right decision. There are harsh words back and forth. There's disrespect. They don't know how to understand one another, communicate or love one another unconditionally. We begin the story there, and we try to deal with the issues that so many couples deal with. And, people are in the theaters, weeping, saying, "This movie helped save my marriage." They're saying, "This is the message I need to hear. I needed to hear that there's hope and healing that can take place in my home right now." And so, that was part of what we desired to do.

MOVIEGUIDE®: Alex, you said this movie actually began with prayers and your idea that you wanted to do something that's culturally important?

Alex: Yeah, for each of our movies it started out with – we call it a "Season of Prayer" to know the difference between a good idea and a God-idea. Basically, it's seeking the Lord, asking him for the most effective ministry idea to reach the masses.

Each of these movies ends up taking about two years from the time when you begin writing to the time when you finish promoting and release the DVD. And, if we're going to spend two years of our lives on something, we want it to matter the most, to make the biggest impact. It's very scary for us that Stephen and I, and Michael Catt, our senior pastor, and Jim McBride, our executive pastor, that the four of us feel like this is truly the direction God wants us to go before we ask our entire church to dive into this with us for months and months at a time. So, it all starts with a season of prayer until we get to the point where we feel like we have the peace of God inside.

MOVIEGUIDE®: How does the script come together?

Stephen: Part of it is from the things that have influenced and impacted us. But, also we like to look around at what God is doing around us. There are influences on the membership of our church, from marriages that have struggled, where we've seen God work in many ways to minimize [those struggles]. Whereas the movie is not a true story based on any one couple, we've certainly been influenced in many ways by people who have struggled and seen how God has worked. So, we use those influences to write scripts that we pray will be relatable to most people.

MOVIEGUIDE®: One of the things that mark your movies, from our point of view, are the well-written scripts. Could you explain what it takes to do a well-written script, like you've been able to do in these past three movies?

Alex: We would never claim to be of the sort that could train other people. I don't even know that we have a secret. What we do tend to do is start off in prayer. Then, Stephen and I like to start off with how the movie ends.

The reason we do that is, when people walk out of the theater or finish watching the DVD, their thoughts are centered on where they stand with God and where they stand with each other. Are they living their faith? So, to get to that point, we start with the end and then we start backtracking to somewhere earlier in their lives where they are going through the struggles that normally come to all of us.

So [with "Fireproof"], we started with their renewal of vows and then we backtracked to a time in their seven-year marriage when things are falling apart. Whereas Hollywood usually starts from the front and has some pie-in-the-sky or fantastical ending, we'd rather end up with something that is realistic, relatable – something where God is the hero at the end of the story.

MOVIEGUIDE®: The church is fully involved with all of your films. Is that correct?

Alex: Every time we do a movie, it seems like the percentage of members increases. The last movie we had somewhere around 1,200 volunteers help us, mainly out of the membership of our church. And they did everything. They cooked the meals. They did wardrobe. They helped with makeup. They helped keep the sets clean. They organized locations. They helped in every way you could almost possibly help, including acting on screen. We're so grateful for a church family that is unified in our desire to reach beyond ourselves and to offer God something that He can use to impact the masses, if He chooses to. Basically, this is our five loaves and two fish. We prepared and cooked it as best we can, and now it's up to God.

MOVIEGUIDE®: How exactly do you put the Gospel into your scripts without becoming preachy or didactic, to keep the plot moving and keep the story moving in a natural way?

Alex: We certainly don't like to do movies where you have to stop the plot and start preaching to the audience. It's important to us that the Gospel presentation and the truth of Scripture are intertwined inside of the plot. In "Fireproof," if you remove the Gospel presentation, the entire plot changes. So, just like "Facing The Giants," it happens in natural conversation in everyday life. So, we don't like to make the audience feel that we're stopping to preach at them. We want the conversations about the Gospel to seem very real and natural in the movie, as much as possible, so that they're never distracted by a feeling like they're targeted. We're just trying to tell a very good story of lives that were changed when they turned to the Lord. …

There are still a lot of cities where there's people saying we want this movie ["Fireproof"] to come to our city that's not currently scheduled. Sony has agreed to allow us to start what we're calling now action squads. That is, if a city really wants the movie to come, they can pre-buy tickets and they can say we will support this movie to come to our local theater. When people go to the website [www.fireproofthemovie.com], they can click on Action Squads and they can learn how to bring the movie to their local theater. When we initiated that, we had about 800 inquiries from people asking how they can start an Action Squad. That was very exciting to get that kind of response. We also finished writing "The Love Dare" book [discussed in the movie]. It will be coming out Sept. 26 in bookstores wherever books are sold at the same time the movie hits theaters, so that people will be able to watch the movie and then go get the book and use "The Love Dare" for their own family.

We've got over 50 marriage ministries that are also supporting this movie. Even the Catholic Church is promoting this movie as a great movie to strengthen marriages, because they're really pro-marriage.

We are thrilled at the grass-roots response from all across the nation. We're just praying God uses it. We hope that He will continue His work to impact families and homes. We would love it if the divorce rate went down as a result of all that's going on. We found out that every percentage point it goes down, it impacts a million children. That's just huge for the future of our country, that we strengthen those foundational relationships in the home.

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Dr. Ted Baehr is chairman of the Christian Film & Television Commission®, which publishes Movieguide®, and Dr. Tom Snyder is editor of Movieguide®. Baehr has a law degree from New York University School of Law. Snyder a B.A. in political science from Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio.