“A Week Away”: First Christian musical to became a Netflix Original
Written by Heartsong Live on 11th June 2020
The Good Witch’s Bailee Madison, Kevin Quinn (Adventures in Babysitting), Sherri Shepherd (Ride Along 2) and David Koechner (Anchorman) are just some the actors starring in what is to be the first Netflix Orginal faith-based musical
Created by Alan Powell who also co-wrote and co-produced the film, the story centres on Quinn a troubled teenager (played by Will Hawkins). After a run-in with the law, he faces two choices: go to Juvenile detention or attend Christian summer camp. The classic girl-meets-boy scenario follows after an initial struggle to fit in and Quinn eventually finds his ‘place in this world’ in the one place he never expected to find it
The idea for a film of this nature stemmed from co-producers Gabriel Vasquez and Alan Powell both with young families of their own who loved Disney Movies. They believed there was space for the coming together of family-friendly entertainment and contemporary Christian music
The musical which was shot in Nashville features reimagined songs from some of the biggest hits in Contemporary Christian Music history like Michael W. Smith’s “Place In This World”, Amy Grant’s “Baby, Baby” and for King & Country’s “God Only Knows.”
Co-producer Vasquez told Billboard: “We have such a love for this catalogue of music that we felt had such an opportunity to still speak, be relevant and be important and we wanted to match that with the levity of church camp”
In a recent interview with The Christian Post, Alan Powell who is also a Christian singer and actor spoke about partnering with Netflix: “When you think about this movie and the tone of the movie and the vibe of the movie, I’ve always, -truthfully, I’m not exaggerating-, hoped that it would find this home.
“And literally, Netflix would be the home because my desire is that this becomes similar to other brands that we love”. Netflix is arguably the biggest distributor of content in the world, so we’ve always wanted and hoped that it would land there,” he said
“A Week Away” is set to stream on Netflix later this year
