The fight for kids begins July 4.

Inspired by the powerful true story, SOUND OF HOPE: THE STORY OF POSSUM TROT follows Donna and Reverend Martin as they ignite a fire in the hearts of their rural church to embrace kids in the foster system that nobody else would take. By doing the impossible–adopting 77 children–this East Texas community proved that, with real, determined love, the battle for America’s most vulnerable can be won.

Join us in bringing this movie to theaters. This campaign is to raise funds for our prints and advertising (P&A) budget. Your investment will help us share this powerful story with a wider audience and help inspire viewers to get involved in the foster crisis.

P&A stands for “Prints and Advertising.” It’s an old theatrical industry term from back when movies were printed onto physical film. The term is still widely used today to describe the cost of taking a finished film like SOUND OF HOPE: THE STORY OF POSSUM TROT and marketing it to moviegoers.

P&A is a crucial piece of the marketing budget for a film and may be appealing to certain investors. With P&A, money is only raised after the film is already made and any potential return to P&A investors is paid directly out of theatrical proceeds–meaning P&A investors get paid right after the theater gets paid. So, it’s the last money in, and the first money out.*

SOUND OF HOPE: THE STORY OF POSSUM TROT's P&A will follow the standard film industry payout model. What’s more, this P&A investment holds the potential for returns far faster than the significantly longer timeframe required when investing in a film before the filming process even begins.

*This Reg CF offering is made available through VAS Portal, LLC. This investment is speculative, illiquid, and involves a high degree of risk, including the possible loss of your entire investment.

Josh and Rebekah Weigel are award-winning filmmakers with a unique ability to create stories that transform and inspire action. They wrote, produced and Josh directed the highly acclaimed and internationally beloved short film, The Butterfly Circus, which became a viral phenomenon with over 100M VIEWS and received over 35 film festival awards, including the Clint Eastwood Filmmaker Award presented by Clint Eastwood at the Carmel Int'l Film Festival. Josh has worked in the entertainment industry for over 20 years. Prior to directing and screenwriting, he worked alongside some of the industry’s top creatives as a Production Designer and Art Director on network promos and national commercials, including ABC Family, Disney, McDonalds, Bud Light, and award-winning Super Bowl spots. Josh and Rebekah wrote the screenplay for SOUND OF HOPE: THE STORY OF POSSUM TROT, Josh directed, and they are producing the film in association with Threesixteen Entertainment.

SOUND OF HOPE: THE STORY OF POSSUM TROT was produced through their company PEACETREE PRODUCTIONS, which exists to create socially and spiritually significant entertainment that transforms lives and inspires action.

Our Mission

Josh and Rebekah have first hand experience with foster care and adoption. They adopted two of their children, and Rebekah has been working with nonprofits, churches and child welfare agencies for many years. After hearing about the Martins and their community’s embrace of kids without families, they knew the story had the power to change things.

According to the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS), there are 400,000 kids in the foster system and 100,000 are in need of adoption. With ~400,000 churches in America, we have more than enough to end the foster crisis if even a single family from every church adopted one child and followed Bennett Chapel’s lead.

Our goal is to end the foster crisis, and prevent it from happening again. This film aims to raise awareness and live on as a tool for years to come inspiring people to get involved . The audience will have an opportunity to Pay-It-Forward by covering the cost of someone else's ticket to see the movie and help raise awareness. We will also provide ways to get involved by meeting practical needs through CarePortal, becoming a foster and adoptive parent, and getting your church involved with wraparound support for foster and adoptive families.

Possum Trot Film, LLC plans to bring this film to audiences in a way that traditional Hollywood has never done before, utilizing the innovative model of Angel Studios. Angel Studios is a film and television studio platform that helps filmmakers come together with viewers to create high-quality TV and film without the Hollywood guesswork. How do they do that? Producers like us use the Angel Studios’ platform to pitch TV content to you, and then you—the audience—chooses which projects qualify to be potentially distributed by Angel Studios.

At Angel Studios, the approach to entertainment isn't just about crafting captivating stories; it's about something more profound—amplifying light. They define entertainment that amplifies light as entertainment that is true, honest, noble, just, authentic, lovely, admirable, and excellent. Through Angel Studios’ platform, thousands of fans choose which titles will be created, funded, and distributed. Angel Studios allows creators and audiences to form passionate communities around their creative projects, making the story behind the story as important as the final project itself.