Hollywood star Gerard Butler has agreed to play the role of the drug-dealing biker who turns into a gun-toting pastor that protects children in the new film “Machine Gun Preacher.”
“Machine Gun Preacher” is based on the true story of Sam Childers, and will chronicle how he transforms from a violent drug addict to a Christian pastor and missionary who involves himself in protecting Sudanese children from the rebel group Lord’s Resistance Army.
According to Variety Magazine, filming will begin in July.
Last year, Childers was interviewed by The Christian Post about his life of wielding weapons to protect orphans while he was promoting his book ‘Another Man’s War: The True Story of One Man’s Battle to Save Children in the Sudan.’
“I don’t condone violence at all,” Childers responded when questioned about his use of weapons. “I don’t believe in violence but at the same time I don’t believe that children should be raped, murdered, or cut up."
“I look of it as a self-defense and I look at it as I’m helping God’s children,” he explained. “I’m not a person out to murder. It’s not that I like hurting anybody. But at the same time these people need to be stopped.”
In his book, Childers describes how he has spent much of the last twelve years building the Angels of East Africa Children’s village and rescuing children from attacks by the LRA. He also remembers gruesome scenes after LRA raids that included smelling the burning of flesh and saving a woman drenched in her own blood from a breast that was half cut off by a machete. He said the crazed rebel group often even forced victims to engage in acts of cannibalism and children to butcher their mothers.
“I loved fighting then. And I still love fighting now. The difference is today I’m fighting for the children and families God sent me to protect,” Childers wrote in his book.
The film “Machine Gun Preacher” is expected to be released in the fall of 2011, according to Lionsgate entertainment company.
(To read the full story, please go to http://christianpost.com. Image is of Sam Childers arriving at his book launch in Beverley Hills, CA).