Small Church Group's Low Budget Football Film is Big Us Hit

The American football team is down on its luck. The coach is about to be sacked, his car keeps breaking down, he's running out of money and the doctor has told him he may never have children.

But then he has a revelation and adopts a new coaching philosophy: trust God. "Football is just one of the tools to honour God," he tells his players. The team - and the good Lord - listen: opponents are vanquished, championships won, the coach gets a new car and as for the fertility ...

That, in essence, is the plot of Facing the Giants, a feature film made for $100,000 (£54,000) by a small church group in Albany, Georgia. But with the help of some professional crew, devout audiences and a professional distributor, the film has taken $2.7m in the 11 days since it opened. It is at No 12 on the US box office list, one place behind the Oscar hopeful All the King's Men, starring Anthony Hopkins, Kate Winslett and Sean Penn.

"We asked God to bless it and look with favour on it, and he did," Alex Kendrick, who co-wrote, co-produced, directed and stars in the film as coach Grant Taylor, told the Washington Post.

The film is showing on 400 screens across the country, a high number for such a low-budget film. And distributors have ignored the traditional movie centres of Los Angeles and New York. "There's a sort of imaginary line where Christian films don't play," Julie Fairchild of the production company Provident Films told the newspaper. Facing the Giants, she noted, is playing in the "flyover country that Hollywood has been ignoring".

Most of the cast and crew are amateurs, recruited from Sherwood Baptist church, and worked for nothing, with the exception of five professional crew members recruited to give the film a polished finish.

The success of Facing the Giants comes as one big studio, Fox, launches FoxFaith, a division that aims to release up to a dozen religious films a year. That move is an attempt to capitalise on the success of Mel Gibson's religious blockbuster The Passion of the Christ.

While the critics have had some difficulty with Facing the Giants, its audience has embraced both the movie's redemptive theme and the literal truth of its plot.

"It was so real," said Linda Kile, 59. "If you believe in the Bible, it's just so real."

"What I liked is that it didn't seem made up," added Adam Rodriguez, 28.