Catholic Filmmaker Tim Reckart on Fusing Faith With a Film Career

Written by Kate O'Hare | Jul 18, 2025 10:06:16 PM

Catholic animator and director Tim Reckart took the stage at a conference to convince Catholics and other Christians to not only watch movies but to make them.

His approach -- presented at the Tepeyac Leadership Conference at Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove, California -- may seem unconventional to fans of faith-based movies, but he speaks from experience.

Who Is Timothy Reckart?

Raised in a Catholic family in Tucson, Arizona, and based in Los Angeles, Reckart -- a Harvard graduate, husband, and father -- was nominated for an Academy Award for his 2012 animated short film Head over Heels

In it, a couple sharing a house but separated finds a way to come back together:

Catholic audiences know Reckart best from his 2017 feature film The Star, a humor-and-faith-filled retelling of the Nativity.

Reckart Co-Founds His Own Studio

In 2022, with Emmy-nominated writer/producer Christian McGuigan (formerly of Participant Media), Reckart co-founded Sycamore Studios. Based in Los Angeles and Austin, it aims to produce premium family entertainment with "stories rooted in beauty, truth, and goodness that elevate the vision of our audience."

The company announced it's developing a version of Doctor Doolittle (also to be a graphic novel). After securing a new round of funding, Sycamore has also won the adaption rights to Zita the Spacegirl, a bestselling series of graphic novels, with Marvel veteran Jeremy Latcham as executive producer.

From Variety:

Based on Ben Hatke’s No. 1 New York Times bestselling trilogy, “Zita the Spacegirl” follows an adventurous girl who is propelled into a cosmic adventure when her best friend is abducted by aliens. Zita’s unwavering determination to find her way back home and her courageous sacrifice for others transform her into an intergalactic hero.

So, you might ask yourself, where's the Christian content? Where are the saints, the Bible stories?

Reckart's Vision of Faith in Filmmaking

While Doctor Dolittle is not a faith-based story, Hugh Lofting's original book series about a doctor who could talk to animals is in the public domain, meaning it can be freely adapted (much like Sherlock Holmes, or all of Jane Austen's books). This allows creators to reshape elements of the story.

So, we'll have to see how that goes.

And, while Zita the Spacegirl is also not faith-based, you can see in the description above that courage and self-sacrifice are major themes.

Latcham is also a producer on Flyer, an upcoming film from Wonder Project (House of David) profiling aviation pioneers (and Christians) Orville and Wilbur Wright.

In addition, according to a June 9 story in The Hollywood Reporter, Latcham has created a screenwriting fellowship that unites Wonder Project with Stand Together Trust. Its goal is to generate screenplays that "reflect an intrinsic hope in humanity and bring the spirit of resilience to moviegoers worldwide."

While all the participants in these projects may not be Catholic, they do fit in to Reckart's goal, as expressed at the conference.

Reckart on why making movies about holy people and Christian subjects may not always be the way to go:

Because we've done it exactly backwards. Instead of investing in Catholic movies made by popular filmmakers, we need to be investing in popular movies made by Catholic filmmakers. Why?

Well, first, many of the films that I think are most resonant with the Catholic faith aren't really on Catholic subjects at all. At some level, they're not even Catholic films. One of my favorite movies, one of the most Catholic movies in a way for me is the movie Children of Men, which has nothing to do with Catholicism, but it resonates deeply with many of our core beliefs about life and babies.

Another example is Bluey. Bluey's got nothing to do with Catholicism on his face, but is so rich with insight about family life and fatherhood.

So I think we should just imagine a world, the world that we'd like to live in, is a world where you could pick up a movie that's a mystery or an adventure or a science-fiction movie or an animated family film.

And none of them would've anything to do with our religion or our faith, but yet we could be sure that watching the movie would bring us some intellectual insight or emotional effect that would bring us closer to God.

That's what we can do if we have Catholic filmmakers making popular films.

And that only works if Catholics and other Christians are willing to go into the film industry:

The career of a filmmaker, film after film after film, that's like a torrent of rain that can carve its way through the rock and establish a new stream. And that's what we can do if we're investing in filmmakers.

So, this is not a content problem, it's a personnel problem. We should stop trying to make Catholic films and start trying to make Catholic filmmakers, Catholic filmmakers who can wield the power of Hollywood to bring souls closer to God.

Of course, that means immersing oneself in a world where many, if not most, of your co-workers don't share your values -- or does it?

Reckart found something interesting while working on The Star at Sony Animation:

So there I was at Sony Animation, a big studio, directing this movie about Jesus. And wouldn't you know, out of this secular studio, all these people kind of came out of the woodwork and asked for a position on the film because it was the kind of film that they'd been wanting to work on for years.

So you never know who's out there. You never know how many good people are out there until you plant the flag and give them something to rally around. We may have to be that first person who does that.

Reckart also believes that faith isn't just a detriment to a showbiz career, it may actually be a superpower:

So as a filmmaker, the paradigm shift I'm always trying to make in my own mind is it's not, "What do I need to avoid doing as an artist because of my faith?" Instead, it's, "What can I do as an artist that no one else can because I've got the faith?" So seen rightly, our faith is not a burden, it's a resource to draw on. ...

So when I think about my career, I was afraid that being a Catholic in Hollywood would drag me backwards. I thought that if I succeeded, it would be in spite of my faith. But now here I look at how things have turned out. The Star was the debut film I would not have chosen for myself. And yet, I hear every year for more and more families who love it and watch it every Christmas, and that would not have happened with any other film.

After all, as Reckart points out, Catholics have been telling God's story through art for two millennia. We already have what he calls the "sacramental imagination."

Reckart also sees the film industry as a mission field:

So if we want to see the culture of Hollywood change, we need to be sending our people into Hollywood. We should develop a conviction that among the young people in our family or our school or parish or ministry, there are probably one or two that God is calling to serve in the film industry. And what are we providing to help them discover that vocation? ...

There is no reason that Catholics should not be considered leaders in this art form as well. I'm convinced that God is calling us there. It'll take courage, boldness, and faith. We'll have to see our faith not as a burden, but as a superpower. And the key to our distinctiveness as artists.

As St. Josemaria puts it in the way, "Don't flutter about like a hen. You can soar to the heights of an eagle." And even though being Catholic in a hostile culture may sometimes feel like a burden, that's just the weight of our wings. God's given them to us. Let's not fail to use them.

Image: Adobe Stock

Kate O’Hare, a longtime entertainment journalist, is Social Media Content Manager and Blog Editor at Family Theater Productions.