Pure Flix was founded in 2005 by David A. R. White, Michael Scott, Russell Wolfe, Randy Travis and Elizabeth Travis. Since its foundation, the company has created many films, such as The Wager, Home Beyond the Sun, In the Blink of an Eye, Sarah's Choice, , ,Holyman Undercover, and Samson. The company produced Jerusalem Countdown in 2011, with 10 West Studios. They also produced the first two seasons of TBN's Travel the Road. God's Not Dead starring Kevin Sorbo, Shane Harper and Dean Cain earned over $60 million in the U.S. box-office and was released in digital format by Lionsgate on August 5, 2014. Since late 2015, Pure Flix had its own theatrical distribution arm. In late 2016, Pure Flix announced a homeschooling curriculum for families with home-schooled children and decided to allow their users to delete words such as "hell" and "damn" from their programming. The company has teamed up with the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference to supply further opportunities for Hispanic actors to improve the media representation of the Hispanic community. In 2016, Pure Flix announced that it has struck a long-term multi-year distribution deal with Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, which would officially manage the home media releases of every Pure Flix-produced film, starting with Woodlawn.
''God's Not Dead'' series
Their film God's Not Dead was 2014's highest grossing independent film and one of the most successful independent faith-based films of all time despite negative criticism. In 2016, God's Not Dead 2 grossed over $1.4 million in Brazil and was considered by Vox to be "moderately commercially successful". A third God's Not Dead film, titled , was announced, and released on March 30, 2018. The Christian bandNewsboys appear in and provide music for the first two films in the series. Legalities related to the Johnson Amendment were referenced in the second film.
Pure Flix Entertainment also has an Internetvideo on demand service simply named Pure Flix. The company was founded by David A. R. White, replacing the streaming platform "I Am Flix". It specializes in Christian streaming media and video-on-demand online.
Subsidiaries
Pure Flix owns a subsidiary known as Quality Flix. Quality Flix works with international films, in contrast to Pure Flix, which is primarily focused on distribution of films within the United States.
Controversies
In 2019, Pure Flix's anti-abortion film Unplanned attracted controversy in both mainstream and evangelical media. Some Christian commentators perceived the film as being unfairly censored after it received an R rating from the Motion Picture Association of America and following a brief and subsequently rescinded suspension of the film's Twitter account. Michael Gryboski, writing for Christian Post, criticized major Canadian film distributors refusal to screen the film in the country, calling it a "de facto ban." Film critic Normal Wilner countered that statement by accusing the distributors of employing disingenuous tactics to "manufacture a controversy," pointing out that the film was eventually shown in about 25 Cineplex and Landmark theaters in Canada and claiming nothing had prevented an earlier release. In turn, he accused Pure Flix of deliberately choosing not to screen Unplanned for critics to avoid negative reviews. Despite Pure Flix films generally being well-received by its evangelical Christian viewership, the company has also attracted criticism from several Christian commentators. Film critic Alissa Wilkinson, who wrote for Christianity Today and teaches at the Christian King's College in New York City, criticized Pure Flix films for being intellectually unstimulating and reinforcing their audience's prejudices "instead of exercising and challenging the imagination of their audience in ways that would make their audience better Christians." She also criticized the studio's successful God's Not Dead trilogy for being "far more interested in bolstering a certain sort of persecution complex than in encouraging its audience toward Christlike behavior." Justin Chang, another film critic who identifies as Christian, likewise criticized Pure Flix's brand of faith-based films for what he perceived as their "self-victimizing" depiction of the evangelical Christian community. Kayla Bartsch, writing for National Review, argued that Pure Flix's films "work to confirm the hypothesis that American Christianity must needs be artless and unrefined," making a case for more nuanced and stimulating religious films.
