When Calls the Heart, (WCTH) the brainchild of co-creators Michael Landon, Jr. (a producer, director and son of famed Little House on the Prairie actor Michael Landon, Sr.) and Brian Bird (a writer and producer for Touched by An Angel and other hit shows and movies for over thirty years), has wrapped itself around viewers heartstrings like no other family oriented television program in recent history.
A book series about the Canadian West, written by best-selling Christian author Jeanette Oke, was the inspiration behind WCTH. The Fox Faith film Loves Comes Softly, based on her first novel published in 1979, aired on the Hallmark Channel in 2003. Bird recounted how he and Michael formed Believe Pictures in 2005 and obtained the rights to WCTH. But the 2008 worldwide financial meltdown interrupted making the original film.
That’s when an unlikely source stepped in. Brad Krevoy, co-founder of the Motion Picture Corporation of America, came to their rescue after the shows original backers departed in the middle of production. At the Jamestown Movie Ranch in Langley, British Columbia (B.C.) in Canada, Krevoy, Landon and Bird then constructed their set on the 200-acre site which included a western town, lakes and streams. In 2012, when response to the movie tested off the charts, Hallmark, considering a foray into episode TV at the time, asked for six initial cable TV episodes of WCTH. Filming began in September 2013, and the first show aired in January 2014.
Read more by Dylyce P. Clarke on Examiner