The Most Reluctant Convert: the Untold Story of CS Lewis, starring Nicholas Ralph and Max Mclean launches in select UK cinemas on November 7.
The new biopic is directed by double-Emmy and double-Bafta award-winning filmmaker, Norman Stone (BBC’s Shadowlands, The Narnia Code). It features the beloved author whose books have sold nearly a quarter of a billion copies worldwide.
The Fellowship for Performing Arts in association with Trafalgar Releasing has announced the UK release of The Most Reluctant Convert. The film traces the spiritual journey of renowned author of The Chronicles of Narnia.
The riveting film looks back on the events that began CS Lewis’ journey from a vigorous debunker of Christianity to becoming the most influential Christian writer of the past century.
Nicholas Ralph, star of All Creatures Great and Small, plays Lewis as a young man who has a terrible relationship with his father and goes off to the trenches in the Great War, before becoming a fellow at Oxford University. The film introduces Eddie Ray Martin as the childhood Lewis, who loses his mother to cancer and then renounces his faith.
The drama was filmed in 18 locations in and around Oxford with an impressive roster of filmmaking talent that includes cinematographer Sam Heasman; composer Craig Armstrong; and production designer, Roger Murray Leach.
Acclaimed theatre actor Max McLean is featured as middle-aged Lewis looking back on the events that moved him from vigorous debunker of Christianity to become the most influential Christian writer of the past century. Says Max, “This story has a remarkable ability to engage audiences regardless of their religious belief. CS Lewis applied his formidable and self-deprecating wit to engage audiences about his own trying and painful experiences.”
The Most Reluctant Convert is a ringside seat to the story of one of the 20th Century’s great thinkers, as he battles with himself and ultimately finds faith. The film explores the impact friends had on the dedicated atheist who was forced to question his own disbelief such as: JRR Tolkien (played by Tom Glenister); Hugo Dyson (played by David Shields) and Owen Barfield (played by Hubert Barton). The 17-member cast also includes: David Gant, Richard Harrington, Amy Alexander and Michael Ward.
The production includes 190 extras and 270 costumes designed by Poli Kyriacou with makeup designed by Nicole Stafford. The executive producers are Matthew Jenkins and Ken Denison.
The film is based on the hit US play CS Lewis on Stage: The Most Reluctant Convert. Adapted by and starring Max McLean. Before the pandemic, it had been performed 287 times in 64 cities and on college campuses since its 2016 premiere. With extended runs in New York, Chicago and Washington, DC, The Most Reluctant Convert has been seen by more than 100,000 people. The play and the film are based primarily on CS Lewis’ memoir, Surprised by Joy, which is licensed from The CS Lewis Company.
At age 19, CS Lewis witnessed first-hand the waste of life in the trenches of France during World War I, concluding that “either there was no god behind the universe, a god who is indifferent to good and evil, or worse, an evil god.” Yet, Lewis could not accept the materialist view that meaning, rationality, or purpose, were just the accidental results of physics and biochemistry.
As a 16-year-old, he had picked up a copy of George MacDonald’s Phantastes, which he said, “baptized my imagination.” MacDonald, along with GK Chesterton and the influence of his robust group of young scholars such as Tolkien, Barfield and Dyson, moved him further up the theistic path until he finally “admitted that God was God, knelt and prayed, perhaps the most dejected, reluctant convert in all England.”
The Most Reluctant Convert Trailer
For more info visit www.CSLewisMovie.com
Also read: Tolkien – Meet God’s Undercover Agent Behind Lord Of The Rings
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C. S. Lewis was an apostate who considered it necessary to intellectually excuse himself from believing some of the most fundamental Christian beliefs. His writings give no indication of regeneration or saving faith, and encourage the idea that neither are particularly necessary and God will sort it all out in the end. By now he will already be well aware just how wrong he was.