eKKL Entertainment released the official trailer for “Elijah Peel” on Tuesday, setting an August 14 theatrical bow for the redemption drama and giving the wider world its first long look at Evelyn Grace Kite, the 9-year-old whose ICFF Best Lead Actress win we covered here over the weekend.
Kite made history on May 2 in Orlando, becoming the first child ever to take home the Angel trophy in that category at the International Christian Film & Music Festival. The trailer drop, four days later, lands as her introduction to a much larger audience. Robert Malcolm Cumming carries top billing as the title rocker whose stage collapse cracks open his life, but it’s Kite’s Jessica Sanchez, a terminally ill 8-year-old cancer patient, who reaches him.
ComingSoon premiered the trailer and a new poster as an exclusive earlier today, hours ahead of the wider rollout. Director Kevin D. Sepe and co-director Nathan Ross Murphy built much of the film’s emotional weight on Kite’s shoulders, and the footage suggests the bet paid off. Her scenes with Cumming, traded across hospital beds and quiet hallways, carry the picture.
Readers who missed our piece on the festival win will find the full story on the site, including the Kite family’s reaction and the detail that Evelyn delivered her acceptance speech while fighting a double ear infection. The short version: she beat a field of adult nominees, and her parents posted to her official Instagram that they “truly did not see that coming. Like, at all.”
A quick refresher for those new to her. Kite is a LaGrange, Georgia native, home-schooled, and one of six performing siblings who go by Chasing KiteStrings. She plays violin, dances, and writes songs that stream on the major platforms. Recent credits include “The Best Thing About Christmas,” “The Naughty List” opposite Jim O’Heir, and ABC’s “9-1-1: Nashville.”
On set in Memphis, Kite kept things loose. “He’s very funny,” she said of Cumming during production. “Sometimes I can’t control my laughter because of him.” Cumming, 33, called the central pairing the spine of the story. “Both characters are in a fight for their lives, and they’re experiencing that together,” he said.
The supporting cast runs deeper than the indie budget might suggest. Kevin Sorbo appears alongside Cumming, with April Billingsley, Princess Elmore, Mark McClain Wilson, Kalyn Wood, Anika Buchanan, Teresa Cesario, and Jason Louder filling out the roster. Willie Robertson and Korie Robertson, the “Duck Dynasty” couple who’ve built a quiet faith-film slate over the last few years, are credited as executive producers.
eKKL founder Michael Scott framed the film as a theatrical play, not a streamer pickup. “From the moment we saw ‘Elijah Peel,’ we knew it was something special,” Scott said in a statement, calling it “exactly the kind of emotionally resonant, crowd-pleasing film that reminds us why the theatrical experience matters.”
Sepe, who is also producing the film and supervising its original soundtrack, has been open about the script’s personal roots. He told the Memphis Commercial Appeal during production that he based the story on his own “mental and spiritual” struggles and his rejection of drugs for his Christian faith. Asked about the title’s resemblance to a famous Memphis rocker’s initials, he insisted the EP overlap with Elvis Presley is coincidence.
Production wrapped in November 2024 in Memphis, where Memphis-based Gravity Productions ran the shoot on what producer Mark Williams described to the paper as a “sub-half-million” budget. The crew turned a half-empty office complex on Airways Boulevard into hospital-room sets, with additional work at the University of Memphis and the Masonic Temple. Nicki Newburger scouted the locations.
“Elijah Peel” hits theaters August 14. The trailer is below.
