Erwin set a movie industry record over the weekend when his new film Jesus Revolution recorded an A+ CinemaScore, making him the first director ever to receive four perfect scores.
Erwin previously notched A+ CinemaScores for Woodlawn, I Can Only Imagine and American Underdog. He co-directed all three with his brother, Andrew Erwin.
CinemaScore was founded in 1978 and began publicly releasing the data in 1986. It polls moviegoers on a film’s opening weekend and asks them to grade movies.
Harold Mintz, president of CinemaScore said, “For a director to achieve that accomplishment once is a rarity. But to hit that mark four times is not only an incredible distinction – it’s unprecedented.”
Erwin told Christian Headlines that he became interested in the Jesus Revolution story while standing on the set of Woodlawn in 2014. He was looking at a Time Magazine cover from 1971 with the headline, ‘Is God Dead?’ He said, “I’ve been passionate about that story ever since.”
Erwin said there are similarities between today’s polarized culture and the polarized culture of the 1960s and 70s adding, “The message for today is that there’s hope – The heartbeat of [the film] is God can do this again – this could happen again. And we’re in such a similar moment. This is the answer to the problems that we’re dealing with. If we found it before, we can find it again.”