This pro-life Christian film wraps up its theatrical run and the filmmakers have to be pleased with the results.
Unplanned had its final theatrical showing on June 13th, capping off 11 weeks in release in America. The movie earned $18.1 million in box office revenue against a production budget of $6 million, making it a commercial success. With international distribution, digital/DVD sales and streaming platform deals still ahead, there is yet more income on the horizon.
Beyond the financial considerations, however, is the pro-life message at the heart of the movie and making sure that it is heard. Here, the writer/director team of Cary Solomon and Chuck Konzelman certainly earned a feather in the cap, so to speak, by overcoming broad and sustained efforts from pro-abortion forces to suppress the film.
We detailed those unrelenting attempts in an earlier article, but they ranged from an unjust "R" rating from the Motion Picture Association of America, to refusal by TV channels to run ads for the film and even apparent sabotage efforts by tech companies. It was a concentrated campaign the likes of which we cannot recall for any other film.
Why would the proponents of the mass killing of innocents go to such lengths to silence this movie? Evil works best when hidden from view, or as a social media post we saw a few months back succinctly put it, "Darkness fears the light."
Unplanned is that light in the struggle at hand. Based on a memoir of the same name by Abby Johnson, a former abortion clinic director who became an outspoken right-to-life advocate, it is a damning exposé of the immoral and moneygrubbing practices of the abortion business in America.
The film does a powerful job of bringing Johnson's story to life on the big screen, particularly through the performances of the two lead actresses, Ashley Bratcher and Robia Scott, both of whom are Christians. There are scenes in the movie that will bring tears to your eyes, particularly when you realize that they are but a reflection of the reality being played out thousands of times a day at abortion businesses all across our country.
That was something pro-abortion forces clearly did not want people to see, and not just in America. The film was initially blocked in Canada, though that has now been reversed thanks to the determined actions of pro-life supporters there.
How many minds are changed as a result of this movie is unknowable, but the people behind Unplanned have done their part. And those efforts call to mind a famous quote from William Wilberforce, a devout Christian and member of the British parliament who led the fight to end the slave trade by his country in the early 1800s.
"You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know."
So it is in America after Unplanned. The abortion industry and it supporters may refuse to watch it, but they can no longer hide the nakedness of their for-profit killing of unborn children behind the fig leaf of women's healthcare: this film reveals the abhorrent truth with searing clarity.