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Quotes are trimmed for length; but the words are the brothers’ own. Watch the Kooman brothers' full interview here.
 
What if the Bible came to life on screen, not because of a major studio, but because of people just like you? That's the story of how Daniel and the Fiery Furnace came to be, and you can still be part of it. Read on to learn how.

No studio greenlit this film. Thousands of ordinary people paid for it, one generous gift at a time. And when their need changed, GiveSendGo stepped in as an Executive Producer, and became the platform they'd finish the race on.

The same generosity that got this film made is the same generosity it needs to be seen widely. A film like this opens in about 1,000 theaters on September 18, and enough advance ticket sales can take it to 1,500. The tickets bought before opening day decide which cities get a screen at all, which means a church that fills one theater changes the map for every other church in its region.

One way to be part of it right now is through the movie's Pay It Forward fundraiser on GiveSendGo. Just $15 sends someone who couldn't otherwise afford it to see Daniel and the Fiery Furnace too. Sponsor a seat.

We hopped on a video call with the two brothers who made this film, to ask them the questions a pastor, a small group leader, and a parent would actually ask before they see it.
 

What is Daniel: The Fiery Furnace about?

In Daniel 3, three Hebrew men refuse to bow to a king's ninety-foot golden statue, and a proud, furious Nebuchadnezzar sentences them to burn for it. Then a fourth figure shows up in the fire with them, changing everything.

Mena Massoud, of Disney's live-action Aladdin, plays Daniel. Elijah Alexander, who played Atticus in The Chosen, plays Nebuchadnezzar. They shot Daniel and the Fiery Furnace in India using real palaces and converted military compounds, including a sunrise cavalry charge inside a nine-hundred-year-old fort that people still live in today.
 

Why tell this story now?

"There's an ongoing battle for the soul of each person. There is a battle for whether you're going to choose faith over fear," they said. "There will come a time where your beliefs will be challenged. And there'll be a time where you may face your own version of, say, the fiery furnace."

Knowing God and His Word, and passing that on to our children, has never mattered more. Kids are more capable of understanding this than we often give them credit for, and stories like this one are exactly how that understanding takes root.

While they were researching, one detail changed how the brothers saw the whole story. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego weren't seasoned elders or warriors. They were kids.

"They were likely teenagers, young adults when they got to Babylon… Would a 16-year-old, a 19-year-old, a 22-year-old be able to withstand some of the pressures that these guys had at this moment?"

That's a question worth putting in front of a youth group. And how does their example change the way you think about faith? Could it help you stand more courageously when your own beliefs and convictions are tested?
 

Where was Daniel when his friends went into the fire?

This is the question their audience asks more than any other, and the brothers asked it too, early on when creating the film.

"One of the biggest questions we asked was, where was Daniel? Because in the story with the three guys, they go into the fire and there's nothing really said about Daniel…"

Scripture says plainly in Daniel 2:49 that Daniel held a different position than his three friends, and likely was elsewhere when the furnace was fired up. You can read the full breakdown of that [here]. But we don't know for certain. Was he there to see his friends thrown in? Maybe. Maybe not.

"But we know that if he was there with the guys, he would have bowed. That's something that we would have heard about, right? So he didn't bow, but why didn't he bow?"

We asked how the film handles this question. They wouldn't say.

"I can't answer exactly what happens because I want you to check out what happens in the movie."
 

Did you change anything to make it work on screen?

"Why would we change any of that? So there was no desire to even do that… But why change any of these amazing things in the Bible for entertainment's sake? It doesn't even make any sense. It's so exciting and everybody knows it."

This isn't a story that needed embellishing. It's the story people say they've waited their whole lives to see done right, told as faithfully as possible, carrying the same message God intended it to carry. The greatest story ever told needs no additions.

They say a Hebrew scholar who reviewed the script called it the most accurate faith film he'd evaluated. For anyone who already knows Daniel 3 well and has been burned before by a loose adaptation, that's the answer to the question you're carrying.
 

Was there a moment on set you didn’t plan?

They were filming the interpretation of the king's dream in a wide-open courtyard when something incredible happened.

"As Daniel is standing in this amazing location, declaring the word-for-word verbatim scripture from Daniel chapter two to the king… the place like erupted. I mean there's not much other way to put it, like a wind blew in that had not come on the entirety of thirty days previous."

Tents went flying across the set. Nobody had told the actors it was coming, so the reactions you see in the finished film are real, and so is the wind moving through their clothes and hair.

"Having an actor in a costume declaring the prophecy of 2,600 years ago, and then God shows up. I mean, that's how alive and powerful it was."

Not every unplanned moment on this shoot was quite so awe-filled. One morning, nobody had put horseshoes on the horses for a scene, and the field turned out to have more gravel than anyone realized. A language barrier between the brothers and the local wranglers meant nobody caught it in time. What should have been one shoot day turned into three, finishing at midnight and starting again at 4am.

They also told us they lost their originally cast Jeremiah to a visa refusal partway through production. "We literally didn't make that plan," one of them said, "but God found a way to weave some amazing magic into the film."

They didn't just shoot a movie together, either. For most of production, cast and crew lived out of the same hotel in India, eating meals together, and praying together. Not everyone who worked on this film started out as a believer. But by the power and the grace of God, by the time it wrapped, several of them were saved.
 

How does a movie like this get funded?

By real people. Through two rounds of crowdfunding, the filmmakers say they raised more than $1.7 million from everyday givers rather than a studio.

"It basically proved that people want biblical stories. People want to be inspired by scripture. We had so many people going, 'I've waited my whole life for this.'"

That's proof of something bigger than one movie. Audiences are hungry for stories that point back to God, hungry enough to fund that themselves when nobody else will.

Partway through, the site they were raising on failed.

"Someone reached out to us and they were like, 'Why are you not using GiveSendGo? Like these guys, they have everything together, like you should be working with them.' And we, within 24 hours, we met Jacob Wells and Heather Wilson and connected on just the book of Daniel."

"We were like, wait, are we like brothers and sisters? Like, are we related? This is crazy. And we just felt like instant family."
 

What can a church or a small group actually do?

The Kooman brothers shared three suggestions.

Take a whole screen. Thirty people is the number.

"If you have a church group, you can sign up. You can even rent out theaters with your church. That's a really powerful way to do it as well. That shows immediate interest to the theaters, and they'll definitely take us up on a buyout of a theater if a church group wants to do that. So we're making that available for churches and groups."

"Youth groups or anything like that would be a great way to see it, especially with your friends or family or church community. I think it's thirty is kind of the number that if you have thirty people together you can buy out screens."

Thirty is one small group with a few friends invited, or one youth group on a Friday night. Every seat bought early also tells the theaters to open more screens in more cities, so a group in a smaller market is doing two jobs at once.

Sponsor seats for people who can't buy their own. The filmmakers keep a real list of them, and $15 covers one.

"That might be a $15 that's not in their weekly or monthly budget, or maybe they want to bring their family and they need two free tickets and they pay for two."

Thirty sponsored seats fills a theater with people who were never going to be able to come.

Get to an advance screening. There are about 40 of them for pastors and church leaders before September 18, and they're already three-quarters booked. The brothers have sat in those rooms themselves.

"People that are in the church and advance screenings are just like weeping in the seats… we've seen the movie hundreds of times and it still cuts to the heart, because it's scripture. You hear those lines of scripture come to life and you see those characters responding, and it grips you."
 

Is Daniel: The Fiery Furnace OK for kids?

There's no official rating yet, and the brothers expect that to change once the process finishes. What they told us directly: "There's no language or sexual content or any of those elements."

The intensity felt throughout the film is real peril rather than the content you'd normally screen for. An army takes Jerusalem with swords drawn. Nebuchadnezzar is a threatening presence through much of the movie. And then there's the furnace. On age, they gave a general range instead of a cutoff.

"I think 10 plus, 9 plus, something in there is a really accurate [guide]."

But parents know their own child and their maturity best. They're the ones equipped to make that call.

We wrote a full parents' guide that goes age by age and scene by scene. If you're deciding about an eight-year-old, start there.
 

What are you praying for on September 18?

"I want people to take it in, in a theater with friends and family or church members and then tell others about it so that people will open the book, read it, and become more familiar with the story and with all the parts that are around the story of Daniel."

Then one of them stopped mid-answer.

"It gives me chills. I literally have chills right now to think about, what if the people that you bring to this movie experience what King Nebuchadnezzar experienced when they look into the furnace? What if they have that transformative life moment, or the beginnings of that, in their own life?"

Nebuchadnezzar worshipped many false gods, which is exactly why he sentenced Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to the furnace for staying faithful to the one true God instead. When he peered into the fiery furnace, he didn't fully understand what, or more so who, he'd seen, other than it was no ordinary man, but it was the moment his life changed. His full conversion doesn't come until later in the book, but it's hard not to see that day as where it started.

You can read more about who that fourth figure was here, but what the Kooman brothers really want people to take away is this:

"The way to a future in eternity is through the fourth man in the fire."

Someone who sits down to see this movie may have their own Nebuchadnezzar moment.

"Our prayer has always been that people would open the Bible because of this movie."
 

Bring someone with you

So don't go alone. Take a friend. Take family. Take that person you've been meaning to reach out to, or a group from your church. Read Daniel before you go, watch the movie together, then talk it over afterward. Trust that Jesus can meet them right where they are, through this movie, and through you being the one who brought them.

Daniel and the Fiery Furnace opens in theaters September 18, 2026.

Sponsor a seat for $15. One person who couldn't buy a ticket gets to go. Thirty seats fills a screen. Give here. 

Bring your group. Thirty people can take a whole theater, and every advance ticket helps open more screens in your region. Plan a group night.

Pastors and church leaders: advance screenings are running now and are three-quarters booked. Request one.

Stories like this are rare, and they matter more than any one box office weekend. Every seat filled, every seat sponsored, every person invited is a chance to make His name known a little further and share His hope with someone who needed it. That mission of hope is what GiveSendGo and this movie are all about.
 

Keep reading
 

• [Is Daniel: The Fiery Furnace OK for Kids? An Honest Parent's Guide] — the expected rating, the three scenes worth knowing about, and what the filmmakers told us about what ages should see this movie.
• [Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego: the Three Who Would Not Bow — and the Fourth Man in the Fire] — the full story, why Daniel may or may not have been there during the fiery furnace, and who the fourth man in the fire was.
• [New Christian Movies in Theaters: What's Worth Seeing in 2026] — the faith films reaching theaters this year, and an honest read on each one.
   

Header image from Daniel and the Fiery Furnace.