AMERICAN UNDERDOG Trailer

Sport and faith combine in American Underdog, the latest from the directing team of Andrew and Jon Erwin.

If you follow American football, then you’ll know the name Kurt Warner. Quarterback for the St. Louis Rams, Super Bowl winner, league MVP, his accolades go on and on. You’ll likely also know his feel-good backstory, which saw him go undrafted out of college, play in smaller leagues, and work at a grocery store until he miraculously got his break.

This movie makes his story into a feel-good biopic, but despite being a part of American sport legend, there’s another undercurrent to this movie that may not be obvious. This also falls into America’s faith-based film movement, which has done steady business over the last decade and built to the point where this large production can slide into your average theater potentially without the average moviegoer realizing.

The Erwin Brothers are, in fact, mainstays of the genre, having directed some of the more successful entries like I Can Only Imagine and I Still Believe. These are not the strident types like the God’s Not Dead series, so it makes sense that they’re the ones knocking on the door of mainstream success.

Bigger productions means bigger stars, which is one of the ways the religious undertones may slide under the radar. I mean, did you expect Shazam! star Zachary Levi or True Blood’s Anna Paquin to turn up in one? But here they are, starring as Kurt Warner and his wife, Brenda.

To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with putting faith in films, especially if your biopic subject is religious, but this is an organized brand of proselytizing that you should be aware of going in.

American Underdog is directed by Andrew and Jon Erwin and stars Zachary Levi, Anna Paquin, and Dennis Quaid. It will be released in the US on December 25th, 2021. Further release dates are not currently known.

Will you check this one out? Let us know in the comments!