UNSUNG HERO Takes No. 2 Spot at Box Office
By Movieguide® Staff
UNSUNG HERO took the No. 2 spot at the box office for its opening weekend.
The family-friendly flick grossed $7.8 million, per Box Office Mojo.
Based on for KING + COUNTRY’s Joel and Luke Smallbone’s family, the movie sees the Smallbones move from Australia to the United States in the ‘90s after their father, David, loses his music company.
“The heartbeat behind the movie is this: I believe in the power of family. I think family is more important today than it ever has been in the history of the world,” Luke told Mike Huckabee.
Movieguide® praised UNSUNG HERO’s focus on family, “sacrificial love, faith, honor, and courage through various trials.” It earned a +1 content score. Part of the review reads:
UNSUNG HERO is a true story about a Christian family from Australia’s struggles to survive and thrive in the rough and tumble music business while trying to serve God. When the father, David Smallbone, loses big on promoting an unsuccessful tour, he thinks relocating the family to Nashville may be their best route forward. Odd jobs and a local church keep the family afloat while David seeks work in the music industry. David’s father, wife Helen and others tell him he should focus on the musical talent living under his own roof. The family’s prospects rise when he takes that advice to heart. Can focusing on God and family lead them to the new life they seek?
UNSUNG HERO is a powerful, compelling story of faith and family, told with lots of sincerity and heart. The acting and writing is very good and convincing. UNSUNG HERO has a strong Christian, biblical worldview. The family’s Christian faith is not only clear from their repeated prayers to Jesus to guide and provide for them, but also from their infectious enthusiasm and spiritually uplifting song lyrics.
Daisy Betts, who starred as Helen Smallbone, said the part resonated with her as she is also a mother.
“When I read the script, I called my agent, and I said, I think this is the one. Yeah, I need to do this film,” Betts told Movieguide®’s Dr. Ted Baehr at the premiere. “I am a mom. It spoke to mothers. It’s like, ‘Hey, moms, we see you, and we appreciate you.’ And even though it’s subtle. You do so much to be the glue that holds the family together, and I loved that about this film.”
At the 2024 Movieguide® Awards, Joel Smallbone explained what he hopes audiences take away from the movie.
“It is titled UNSUNG HERO, and I think, depending on the viewer and the stage of life, you see yourself in the story,” he said. “If you’re an 18-year-old girl, Rebecca, my sister, becomes sort of your unsung hero. And if you’re a mom and a wife, then my mom Helen is just such a great figure in real life and in the picture. And if you’re a husband or a father, and you’re trying to navigate your way through…wanting to protect and wanting to lift up your wife and your family, then you relate to David’s character.”
“Migrating around the world and taking leaps of faith and taking risks fighting for each other instead of against each other in these really dire and desperate moments,” Joel told the Kingdom Story Company. “[The movie] hopefully just gives on small example of what it looks like to rise above together.”
Movieguide® previously reported:
Joel and Luke Smallbone explained how UNSUNG HERO honors their family and why creating a movie felt like a natural extension to their other projects.
“This isn’t really our story. This is our parent’s story, but we actually have a role. We take, basically, most of mom and dad’s life, and we condense it down into what feels like a year and a half kind of time frame, and it’s fascinating to look back now as an adult,” Luke told I Am Second.
“Being one of seven kids, it was just the reality you knew; sleeping on beds made out of clothes, moving halfway around the world, it was just the reality that we knew. And yet, when I reflect on it, there were so many things about it that were unsafe,” he continued. “We did not know where the next meal was going to come from, mom was six months pregnant with our little sister, we didn’t have any insurance or any way forward, we went to a hospital, we were half a world away from our cousins, our aunts and uncles, our grandparents and beyond.”
“Yet, with all of that against us, we felt very safe in one another’s love and in our parent’s love,” Luke added. “It became this great opportunity.”
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