About Paul Lalonde

Paul Lalonde is a pioneering producer and writer of movies in the apocalyptic-thriller genre. In 2012 Paul formed Stoney Lake Entertainment (SLE). This fulfilled his dream of creating a production company that focuses on producing big budget faith-themed films for a wider audience.

“Left Behind” will be SLE’s first feature film and stars Nicolas Cage, Cassi Thomson, Chad Michael Murray and Nicky Whelan. It has an estimated budget of $16 million and will be released nationwide in theaters in 2014.
Starting out in TV in 1989, Paul went on to co-found Cloud Ten Pictures in 1995. To date Cloud Ten has produced nine feature-length films and 15 documentaries. Most notable is the original “Left Behind” trilogy of films (2000-2005), which Paul is credited with co-writing all three screenplays. The films have gone on to sell more than 10 million copies. The movies are based on the “New York Times Best Seller” book series of the same name.

As a producer, Paul’s success with Cloud Ten Pictures has been chronicled in a wide range of media, including the “Los Angeles Times”, “The Wall Street Journal”, “GQ”, “The New Yorker” “Forbes Magazine” and “CNN”, to name a few. It has also brought the company nominations for the prestigious “Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award”, “Canada’s 50 Best Managed Companies” and “Canada’s Outstanding CEO of the Year” awards.

Paul’s Work

Paul’s talents have filled an enormous niche for faith-themed entertainment in the marketplace, prompting the title ‘Genre Kings’ from “Hollywood Reporter”. His business savvy is demonstrated by the incredible sales and consistent chart-topping results of his award-winning films like “Apocalypse: Caught in the Eye of the Storm” (1998), “Revelation”1999), “Tribulation” (2000), “Deceived” (2002), and “Judgment” (2001), which made waves in Hollywood when it flew to #7 on the Billboard sales charts right behind the Oscar-winning film “Gladiator”.

Paul’s biggest screenwriting success to date is “Left Behind” (2000) and its sequels, “Left Behind II: Tribulation Force” (2002) and “Left Behind: World at War” (2005). The films feature “Growing Pains” and “Fireproof” star Kirk Cameron, and their video releases have topped studio releases such as “Toy Story 2″, “The Green Mile” and “Erin Brockovich”. The first two films have hit #1 on Amazon.com. “Left Behind” was the number one movie in the nation when it released. “Tribulation Force” was #2 only to “Spider-Man”, which released the same week.

The film garnered several honors in 2000 and 2001, including a family-friendly “Four Dove Rating” from “The Dove Foundation”, “Best Feature Film” at Chicago’s “WYSIWIG Film Festival”, and “Best Action-Long” at the “Thunderbird International Film Festival”. “Left Behind II: Tribulation Force” was nominated for “Best Live Action DVD Premiere Movie” at the 2002 “DVD Premiere Awards”. Paul lives with his wife of 27 years and two children in southern Ontario.

The Premise of Left Behind

The entire planet is thrown into mayhem when millions of people disappear without a trace — all that remains are their clothes and belongings. Unmanned vehicles crash and planes fall from the sky, overwhelming emergency forces and causing massive gridlock, riots and chaos. Airline pilot Ray Steele (Nicolas Cage) struggles to save the lives of the passengers who remain on his flight, while his daughter (Cassi Thomson) races to find her brother and mother, both of whom have disappeared.

What Makes The Movie Adaptation of Left Behind So Compelling?

“The most compelling thing about it to me is that it’s a true story that hasn’t happened yet, and I think that’s what makes it so compelling is being able to sit down and read this incredible almost like a twilight zone story, knowing that it’s actually going to happen and I think that’s what sets this apart from anything else. In and of itself even if that weren’t the case, it would still be a compelling story even if it were pure fiction and not based on the Bible and not based on prophecy. Even in that situation it would still be a fantastic story, but when you add in the fact that this is really going to happen I think that’s what makes it so compelling.”

Why Do a Remake?

“Well the main reason to do a remake is to get it out to a broader audience and I think the faith based film world has been guilty, myself included of preaching to the choir forever and ever in the entire history of faith based movie making, very few have ever actually crossed over into a mainstream audience. So while you’re always hoping as a filmmaker and this is my ninth movie, you’re always hoping it’s going to cross over and lots of people are going to watch this and get to know the truth or start asking questions.

The bottom line is there aren’t very many people watching who aren’t already saved. The vision for this movie was to tell the story to people who need to hear it not just people who want to hear it. The only way to do that was to make it bigger, better, put some real name actors into it, and try and create a story that is story first and message second.”

Paul Lalonde’s Response to Those Who Say The Film is Not a True Story

“I would say excellent! You don’t have to believe it’s a true story in order to enjoy the story. Go watch it and then go home and pick up your Bible and you’ll see that it is prophesied in the Bible and then you have to make your own decisions from there. There’s no altar call in this movie. Nobody turns to the camera and starts talking about Jesus like what happened in most faith based movies. This is more just about creating interest and getting people to ask questions. The great thing about this Left Behind, is you don’t have to believe it in order to enjoy it.”

What it Was Like to Work With Nicholas Cage

“I didn’t know the guy. I expected him to be a little more eccentric and a little bit more of a weirdo, just based on the nonsense you read on the internet and that kind of thing. He’s absolutely a super guy; great guy to work with, extremely professional, cooperative, friendly, just an absolutely normal family man. He had his family with him there with him on the set and just really a super guy, and an unbelievable professional. I was just in awe not only of his performances but just how he’s able to turn it on and off and you think, “Well, that’s why he’s Nicolas Cage.” But it was a treat just to get to work with this guy.”

Did The Film Process Lead to Any Gospel Conversations?

“Not really, I think people are a little… I mean at the beginning people tiptoed around a little bit because, I mean you’re coming on; you’re doing this Christian movie; everybody had obviously googled The Left Behind and seen what it was. So I think there was a little bit of a feeling out process at the beginning where somebody might stub their toe and cuss and all of a sudden say, “Oh, I’m sorry, sorry, sorry,” you know as if I’m the pope. So it took a little while for people to loosen up, but once they did there were great conversations about prophecy.

We weren’t sitting down trying to witness to people or making altar call speeches at the dinner table, but lots of great conversations and exactly the kind of questions and conversations that I’m counting on to come from the people in the audience who get to see this. In fact, people who aren’t Christian or at least who aren’t evangelical Christians or schooled in Bible prophecy, a lot of this was a complete surprise to them. I mean there’s lots of people who have gone to church their whole life and never even heard about any of this stuff, and most churches don’t teach the rapture or teach any end times in the church, so you could go to a lot of churches for your entire life and never hear about any Bible prophecies.”

Were There Any Perfect Takes While Filming?

“Well fortunately, there were a whole lot of those experiences and I know, John Patus and I,  he’s the guy I wrote the screenplay with, we were there obviously for every single scene and every single minute and you know we’ve been living and breathing this script for two years, so every scene was exciting watching it come to life and to be honest there were just so many wonderful moments. I mean there’s some that really stand out “the moment of the rapture,” I’m not going to give away any spoilers, but that came out really, really well and it just worked. I was so excited about that because that’s a tough thing to portray. In the past it’s always been cheated by just a flash of flight and suddenly somebodies gone or a car crashes or whatever.”

A Moving Scene in Left Behind

“There’s also a scene where Nick Cage is talking to his daughter and it’s a very emotional scene and he’s breaking down thinking that he’s never going to see her again. He had the entire set was in tears watching this guy perform. It was just unbelievable and that was very moving to me too because that’s when I knew, we’ve really hit it with this movie.

We’ve really gotten great performances that usually in this faith based world, and specifically the low budget world, you don’t always get to see great performances all the way down the line. You might have the one actor you’ve spent eighty percent of your budget on, but very quickly you’re down to people who are just, you know, the coat check lady from your church. That’s what happened in so many faith based movies and so it’s just wonderful to have such depth of talent.”

How Important is Opening Weekend For a Christian Film?

“I think it’s important for any movie. I think you need the opening weekend in order to get the word of mouth spreading and so that’s the big thing is you want to get on the radar. You want to hit it with a splash. The thing I always enjoy is that every time there’s a successful Christian movie, the trade publications variety and Hollywood reporter, they always say the same thing which was “This is a surprise out of no where.” I don’t know how many times we have to surprise everyone before it stops being a surprise. They do it every time.

I remember when Courageous came out and they were saying, “Courageous came out. It’s was a big surprise.” Well it wasn’t a big surprise to me. It wasn’t a big surprise to anybody who knew about the faith based market. But we’re just always ignored and so any success you can have on opening weekend at least it gets people to announce the surprise. Left Behind will be a successful movie, I know that. Left Behind will have a successful opening weekend and it will be a surprise to everyone in the movie press.”

The Challenge of Making a Faith-Based Film

“Well I think there’s less certainly resistance now than there was in the past because there has been successes. I mean, Left Behind, the first Left Behind was extremely successful on video. It was the number one selling independent video of the year, the year it came out. So it did very well. Obviously, Mel Gibson’s Passion came out and everybody said no to it. He finally had to finance it himself. That was successful. People got all excited. The studios built their little faith based divisions and those all quickly disappeared because they didn’t really understand the market.

What Hollywood Doesn’t Understand About Faith-Based Films

After what we saw with Noah this year, we see that they still don’t. They left a lot of money on the table by being arrogant and being ignorant of the audience. It’s going to take a little while. Hollywoods going to have to make some movies like they did with Noah and make stuff up.  They’re going to get backlash; they’re going to think they’re going to get the Passion numbers; then they’re not going to get the Passion numbers because they’ve made bad decisions and it’s going to be an adjustment process.

In the meantime there’s an opportunity for the Independence to come in and make the good movies that Christians actually want to see and have them be more successful than some of the two hundred million dollar movies that are coming out of Hollywood. I think ultimately down the road we’re going to see some decent Christian movies coming out of Hollywood, believe it or not. It’s going to take a while for them to realize that they should have them written by Christians; they should have them directed by Christians and actually produce movies that are Biblically sound. They don’t’ have to sound preachy, but they need to be sound and I think that’ll happen over time.”

What Would Paul Lalonde Tell Someone Who is Lost in Their Spiritual Journey?

“I would tell them go see the movie. That’s the best way to start on something as difficult as Bible Prophecy. I recommend Tim and Jerry’s books as well because that is a non threatening in a non cerebral way to approach Bible Prophecy and to start to understand Bible Prophecy, rather than immediately saying, “Ok, this Bible Prophecy sounds fascinating. I’m immediately going to sit down and start reading a seven hundred page book about heads, and horns, and  beasts and try and make sense of it.” It can be an intimidating topic to walk into and that’s why I think the Left Behind book series was as successful as it was. It made Bible Prophecy approachable for the lay person whether they’re a believer or not.

The Value of Prophecy in Evangelizing

Prophecy has always been a fantastic door opener for new Christians and non Christians who were not necessarily spiritually hungry. So people who are looking for something who feel the need for a spiritual element in their life, those are the people you can reach by standing on the corner with a megaphone, and yelling “You’re going to hell.” You can get to those people and maybe even think you’re being successful even though you’ve scared away 98% of the people who’ve heard you. But I think prophecy is a great way to reach out to people who have no interest in this stuff whatsoever and to start to get them to ask questions. The big one being is that really in the Bible? and unlike with Noah, the answer is yes.”

As Paul has encouraged I hope you will see the movie, or maybe better yet buy the DVD. Most importantly where do you stand in your knowledge, in your relationship with Jesus Christ? I think He’s the King and I hope you’ll come to that conclusion. 

To watch Left Behind, click here.

For more inContext interviews, click here.