New film puts dramatic twist on a Christmas classic

Do you really believe we should bend the knee to a king an ocean away? Father said this land is the only place where we can truly be free. A new holiday film is putting a dramatic spin on the beloved Christmas classic, Drummer Boy. Joining me this morning, Grammy-winning for King and Country duo, Joel and Luke Smallbone. Morning, guys. Morning, morning. Morning, morning, Graham. It's a pleasure to be with you. Well, thank you very much. So most of your fans know you for your music, but what is music if not storytelling, right? And so now you're taking your music and storytelling talents to the big screen? Yeah. Look, we've said it's like Hamilton meets Greatest Showman meets you, know, The Patriot meets Pride and Prejudice all rammed into one film. Luke and I wrote all the original music for it. It's been eight years in the making. We've not spent more time and effort and resource on any project in the history of King Country. And the real reason is because we believe in, like you said, storytelling. We believe in this country. We're immigrants to this great country. We believe in these ideas of forgiveness and freedom and how the silver screen can really translate in a beautiful way. And so we're so excited, November 6th, to bring this to the nation. So the new film is inspired by one of the most recognizable Christmas songs, Drummer Boy. But the movie kind of takes the story in a different direction. Tell me a little bit about the plot. Yeah, it's about two brothers that end up on opposite sides of the Revolutionary War. And so one of the wonderful things about making a movie like this is it is exciting. It's fun. It's got drama. I'm always amazed at the Revolutionary War where the drummer boys were the ones who were spurring people on, the ones who were giving signals of retreat or charge or tactics or whatever it might be. And so we kind of got lost in the idea of what does that actually look like? One of the taglines for this film is forgiveness is revolutionary. I've heard it said that if you want to live a happy and satisfied life, there's one thing you need to learn how to do, and that is to learn how to forgive the unforgivable in your life. And so the film is it's a musical. It takes on, obviously, these types of fun, warlike elements, while also merging these these deep themes of forgiveness and freedom. Yeah. And I love the movie Unsung Hero. That kind of shows your family's musical roots and how you got you said you immigrated. It kind of walks through that. So this movie is a family affair. So, Joel, you act in the movie. you're also co-composer of the music Luke, you are uh composed the music you're a producer on the film and your other brother Ben directed the film so to the both of you was this a have to work together or a get to work together experience the answer is always yes on both counts right but you know what's beautiful is we got um we got to choose each other um like Luke and obviously music together Ben and I have co-directed films in the past but we really you had brothers particularly with Ben and I coming back together behind the screen to work on this film as we're depicting brothers uh coming back together on the screen and and that was so so thrilling to to you know art imitates life as they say Brendan so to be able to to to put this onto the screen um in a very authentic way was really important to us and side note we have a gift before we go we have a gift for your listeners and your viewers this morning as well okay let's make sure we get to that well they want to know the gift John are we going to give you the first as I said the first gift of Christmas yes yeah yeah so um we're really excited you know this very well but Like in film, everything is predicated to that opening weekend, you know. It's November 6th, 7th, and 8th. And so we got together with Angel Studios and we said, what's something special we can do? And as Luke said, it's the first Christmas gift. We want to give the nation of America a BOGO, which I just found out this terminology. It's a buy one, give one. If you literally go, if you've got your pen and paper, angel.com forward slash drummer boy. angel.com forward slash drummer boy and when you get to the checkout select your seats and everything you hit uh promo code and the keyword is gift the promo code is gift and you'll literally get your second ticket for free but it has to be inside that first weekend uh is the key all right nothing like getting an early christmas gift i love it nice yeah all right luke joel good luck on the project thanks for being here i appreciate it thank you for the time pleasure pleasure yeah see you buddy