Hollywood dysfunction, evil combatted by powerful new endeavor: 'Our goal is to shine a light'
With so much chaos, furor, and dysfunction in culture, entertainment has unsurprisingly become more depraved and disconnected from morality. Yet, new production companies continue to emerge aimed at inspiring families and instilling faith and biblical ethics.
Entertainment industry veterans Monty Hobbs and Valerie Smaldone are among those creating inspirational content with their new company,Just Do GOOD Entertainment, a content creation effort that seeks to entertain, inspire and motivate viewers to do good.
Their show, "Divine Renovation," hosted by Erik Estrada, just launched its second season available now on major streamers. It's a faith-based reality TV show about home improvement that brings in powerful spiritual themes.
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Listen to Hobbs and Smaldone explain:
Another project is "Finding Kindness," a show that finds and features small business leaders who are helping out in their communities.
Smaldone told "Higher Ground With Billy Hallowell" the inspiration for these shows and Just Do GOOD Entertainment more broadly came when she and Hobbs were working on a movie a few years ago in Connecticut.
"It was a real feel-good, inspirational movie about doing good," she said. "Another person had written the story and we were just bringing it to life, but we were filming during the outbreak of the Ukraine war in March of that year, and I remember waking up every morning, thinking about how lucky we were to be going to set to film this lovely story and people were suffering miles away."
Once the film wrapped, Smaldone said she and Hobbs wanted to continue working together, seeking to find ways to push projects filled with "positivity, inspiration [and] helping your fellow person in the world," she said.
That's when they decided to launch "Divine Renovation," which ended up blossoming into Just Do GOOD Entertainment.
"At the beginning of this year, we decided to really finalize and formalize our partnership and to build on Just Do GOOD," she said. "And, everything we do, all the content we create, is about a positive message and really about what can you do — our viewer, our reader, whatever we're doing — what can you do to make the world a better place."
Hobbs said they aren't trying to "reinvent the wheel" and simply want to deliver "good, quality, clean content."
"That seems odd in 2024, nowadays, with the messaging of values, the messaging of respecting our vets, the messaging of that there is a higher power," he said. "Our goal is to shine a light that was embedded in us."
Hobbs continued, "We live in a polarized world now ... that it's always in our face ... and the majority of the public doesn't want that."
There's no doubt a major opportunity exists to serve faith and family-friendly audiences, as evidenced by the continued success of popular TV shows and films like "The Chosen" and "Jesus Revolution," among others.
For too long, Hollywood has ignored the faith and family-friendly audience, though, which is where Just Do GOOD Entertainment comes in. Smaldone shared what she thinks has driven the entertainment industry to embrace more edgy and non-family-friendly content.
"I think sensationalism sells," she said. "Even if you don't like it, you will watch it or you'll click on it because you're curious. ... But the truth is we, at the end of the day, we all want to be better people. We want to do good things for our neighbors."
And that's what Just Do GOOD Entertainment is all about, with "Divine Renovation" and "Finding Kindness" setting out to leave people feeling uplifted.
"The goal is to keep inspiring," Hobbs said. "What we loved about 'Divine Renovation' is, when we go into the community, we weren't just a production company. We brought houses of worship. We brought nonprofits. We brought police departments and people that would unlikely be together. And we saw that after we're there for a very small amount of time, they become friends, they become neighbors."
This story originally appeared on CBN’s Faithwire.
