Movie starring Kevin ‘Hercules’ Sorbo wraps Birmingham shooting today

A feature film with a religious theme, starring Hollywood actor Kevin Sorbo and featuring an appearance by a legendary pop-music diva, is scheduled to wrap up two weeks of location shooting in Birmingham today.

The cast and crew of “Let There Be Light” are using Avondale Park, including its amphitheater, to film a couple of scenes.

Sorbo, who became a star in the 1990s TV series “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys,” is the film’s director and lead actor.

“Let There Be Light” tells the story of “an atheist who gets into a car accident and … switches and turns to a belief in God,” said Chad Rosen, the film’s first assistant director, during a break in filming at the park on Tuesday afternoon. The character’s near-death experience becomes a spiritual turning point, according to Rosen

Producers hope to release the film by Christmas Eve 2017, according to IMDB.com.

Pop singer Dionne Warwick – who shot to stardom in the 1960s with such huge hits as “Alfie,” “Walk on By” and “What the World Needs Now” – sings the main theme for the film and took part in the filming in Avondale, Rosen said.

Additional Birmingham locations have included a local house, a downtown loft and the historic Lyric Theatre, according to Rosen.

Some scenes were also filmed at Cooper Green Hospital, according to AL.com.

Dan Gordon is the film’s producer and wrote the script with Sam Sorbo, who is Kevin’s wife and an actress with about 25 credits since the early 1990s

Kevin Sorbo, with more than 120 acting credits in film and TV, has become increasingly vocal in recent years about his religious faith and how it may affect his career in Hollywood.

He has done some other films recently with religious or spiritual themes, including “The UnMiracle,” “Joseph and Mary” and the surprise hit "God's Not Dead.”

The new film’s cast includes veteran character actors Daniel Roebuck, whose film appearances include “River’s Edge” and “The Fugitive,” and Gary Grubbs, whose nearly 200 film and TV credits include “JFK,” “Ray,” and “The Astronaut’s Wife.”

The production will now move to New York for a couple of days, according to Rosen, who said that some of the film will be shot in Los Angeles.