‘Machine Gun Preacher’ Opens Tonight

'Machine Gun Preacher' opens in theaters across the nation tonight.

The film is the story of Sam Childers who goes from drug addict, gangster to saving the lives of children in Sudan. How bad was Childers?

But screenwriter Jason Keller said at a screening that he couldn’t include some of Childers’ bad boy, earlier life in the script because they were “too intense”. - ChristianToday.com

Gerard Butler, who plays Childers in the movie, had a hard time believing the man he would protray on the big screen really did the things he claimed:

“When I first read it (movie script), I thought, are you kidding me? This couldn’t all have happened. But it did and much more. The man has experienced more than most people would in 10 lifetimes.” - ChristianToday.com

So how did Childers become the Machine Gun Preacher? Childers made his first trip to Sudan in 1998 as a volunteer on a construction project. It was during that visit that he found the remains of a boy who was blown up by a land mine. That one incident led Childers to open an orphanage, saving more than 1,000 kids in Sudan over the past 13 years. The movie stars leading man Gerard Butler as Childers.