‘Grace Unplugged’ a departure for Burg

LOS ANGELES – The last three movies produced by Mark Burg – a sequel to “Saw,” the remake “Texas Chainsaw 3-D” and a violent revenge tale called “The Tortured” – were all rated R for “grisly” and “sadistic” violence.

But Hollywood has a habit of making strange bedfellows, and as Burg’s latest project arrives in theaters today, fans of the horror veteran’s work may be surprised by its story: “Grace Unplugged” is a Christian drama about a church singer whose estrangement from her evangelical father mirrors the prodigal son parable in the Gospel of Luke.

Made for just $1.7 million, “Grace Unplugged” opens in Birmingham, Ala., where 18-year-old Grace Trey (A.J. Michalka) and her father, Johnny (James Denton), are playing devotional songs for a small congregation. It’s clear the two are clashing, and Grace feels her inflexible and authoritative father – “I’m the one in charge of the band,” he admonishes her – is crimping not only her music but also her professional ambitions.

After a fight with her father, Grace decides to leave for Hollywood, where she connects with a record producer named Frank Mostin (Kevin Pollak), who once made albums with her father, when Johnny was a hard-living rock ’n’ roller. Frank encourages Grace to dump her Christian music in favor of pop tunes, and hires a stylist to tart her up a bit.

Before long, Grace is succeeding. But her climb up the charts carries a personal price. Is she living for God, or for herself? Can she own her faith – and be reconciled with her family?

Michalka believes that the movie – rated PG for thematic elements and brief teen drinking – can appeal to mainstream moviegoers in addition to the core Christian audience. “The movie really does plant its feet in both worlds,” Michalka said. “For me, it’s really, truly and purely a family film.”

“Grace Unplugged” was directed and co-written by Brad Silverman and produced by Russ Rice, conservative Christians who previously collaborated on “No Greater Love,” which was released by Lionsgate’s home video division in 2010.

The pair pitched “Grace Unplugged” to Lionsgate’s Anne Parducci. “I thought it was a very fresh concept and I loved the Christian music component,” Parducci said. “I was convinced it was a marketable movie.”

The “Grace Unplugged” script made its way to Burg, where it sat on his bedside table for weeks. Intrigued, Burg’s wife, Shainaz Donnelly, picked it up, read it and insisted her husband do the same.

“It was not what I do. I come home at night and read horror scripts,” Burg said.

But he read it anyway. “I loved it,” said Burg, who is Jewish. He called Lionsgate and worked out a deal. Silverman and Rice had a green light, with Silverman directing. They said they didn’t believe they were making a deal with a horror movie devil because Burg said he trusted them.

“Mark just respected the fact that we knew our audience,” Silverman said.

“We didn’t want to demonize Hollywood and the music business,” Silverman said. “From a storytelling point of view, that would have been a very shallow approach.”

At the same time, the filmmakers didn’t want the film’s central message to be diluted by the studio. So the two negotiated for and were promised, as Rice puts it, “complete control over all of the spiritual content.”