Hype. Delays. More hype, more delays.

That has been the pattern for the highly anticipated, yet-to-be-seen movie from DC Talk. The last official word put the movie in local theatres in September only to see the wall calendar flip to October with no movie.

Dan Pitts of True Artist Management (who manages DC Talk) discussed the situation. "Through it all we encountered different hurdles--some were technical, some were legal, some were hurdles amongst ourselves. There's really five partners in the film--ForeFront, Gospel Films, Intaglio Productions, [director] Ken Carpenter and DC Talk. The amount of time it took to work things out between all those parties took much longer than anticipated. We found some things that weren't delivered, and I probably shouldn't go on the record with [specifics]. But needless to say, it took longer to work things out amongst ourselves. "

The problems that we [anticipated] like getting into the right movie theaters, finding a distributor, finding the right guy in order to market it-we got all over those hurdles.

"Finally, we, with the consent of the guys, basically rolled over and said, 'Look, we just would like the movie out, you guys divvy up the pie.' We had our minimum, so it really wasn't about money. It wasn't about owning this or that. It was about doing something that hadn't been done in our industry, and we felt like we had a real good chance to make a quality piece of art and let the world judge it as it was. Where we're at now is that we've missed our September 15 window of opportunity so now we're trying to find another window."

Pitts continues, "I mean to me I think it was just sad that the failures came from the Christian side of things. When people think of Hollywood and they're out to get Christians--we overcame those hurdles. We couldn't overcome the hurdles amongst ourselves. And I'll say ourselves, even though I don't feel we were the problem."

Toby McKeehan speaks more candidly for the record.

"I think it would be a shame for [the film] not to come out, and right now it's lost in business negotiations between the film company and our record company. We've washed our hands of any business dealings. We've said we'll do whatever it takes to get it out. That's about as bold as you can get from our standpoint.

"The thing about it is when you go and talk to the one side and then the other side, they're both really good people and they want the film to come out as desperately as we do, but it's just something gets caught up in weird negotiation mode."

McKeehan continues, "I just want the fans to know and the people to know that we're not holding this thing up."