Gorman’s varied production career started as an Associate Producer on two national award shows: The Dove Awards (Nashville) and the A.C.E. Awards (American Cable Excellence Awards, Las Vegas). He hosted his own shopping show on America’s Shopping Channel on Cox Cable for two years. For about 25 years, he was a producer, writer and talent for CBN television. For 14 of those years he was a Celebrity Correspondent for CBN. Some of his interviews included Hugh Jackman, Emma Stone, Morgan Freeman, Bryce Dallas Howard, Peter Jackson and many more.

Michael Blanton, of Brentwood, Tennessee, has had a celebrated career in the music industry and continues to be involved in several areas of IP development and branding. A native of Amarillo, Texas, Blanton got his start in music as an A&R representative at Word Records in Waco, Texas, moving to Nashville in 1978 to open the company’s office on Music Row. He and business partner Dan Harrell launched Blanton/Harrell Production and Management in 1980 with Amy Grant as their first client. In 1981 with friend Brown Bannister (’75), they created Reunion Records and Reunion Publishing and soon launched the careers of artists including Michael W. Smith and Rich Mullins. Blanton served as executive producer for some of Grant’s biggest hits, including the albums Unguarded (1985), Lead Me On (1988), and the multi-platinum Heart in Motion (1992), which sold more than ten million copies and received five Pop Grammy nominations, including Album of the Year. He also executive produced hits for Smith including his debut, Michael W. Smith Project (1983) featuring the song “Friends,” The Big Picture (1986), i 2 (EYE) (1988) and Change Your World (1992). Blanton and Harrell worked with authors including Frank Peretti, helping him release his multimillion selling This Present Darkness in 1986 and Piercing the Darkness in 1989. Beginning in 1997, Blanton and Harrell served as co-presidents of Gaylord’s Idea Entertainment, leaving in 2000 and forming Blanton Harrell Cooke & Corzine in 2001. There they signed acclaimed Christian artists such as Point of Grace and Bebo Norman and Joy Williams.

In 2011, Blanton launched Be Music and Entertainment to develop and manage new artists, such as Zane Williams (’99), Dave Barnes, Ginny Owens and All Sons and Daughters. In 2018, he partnered with Vertigo Media to help with their new technology branding. Technology that connects Spotify and Apple into one artist music activation app.

Also, in 2018 Blanton partnered with Gary Glover to form a new consulting and branding team, and they have helped to launch the new on-line digital songwriting venture, called Songwriting University, where anyone around the world can co-write with Nashville songwriters. And finally in 2020 Terry Benedict (producer of Hacksaw Ridge) and Blanton have formed a new film production company named Beacon Hawk Entertainment, planning to move into production of new film projects in 2022.

Blanton is a member of the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences, the Gospel Music Association, the Country Music Association, and the Americana Music Association, and he serves as board chair of Lipscomb’s College of Entertainment and Arts. The team of Blanton & Harrell was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 2017.

Blanton and his wife, Paula, have three grown children all married and living in Nashville – Carter and Molly Blanton, Chelsea and Heath Drimmel and Boothe and Conor Farley – and six grandchildren.

HPN and Joey first connected through a YouVersion devotional that he led as Young Adult Pastor several years ago, and now he is really enjoying praying alongside them as Pastor of Prayer Ministry over the Grace House of Prayer in Arlington, TX. The primary focus of the Arlington chapter is interceding for The Chosen television project about the life of Christ, produced in North Texas: find out more about Pray For The Chosen here: https://linktr.ee/prayforthechosen

Joey grew up watching his dad playing violin in the pit for theatre shows that his mom wrote and/or directed, so his Radio/TV/Film degree and Theatre minor from TCU makes sense to all who know him. The whole Geisel family carries a deep passion for exalting Christ in the arts: Joey and his wife Emma have toured internationally with dance ministry (her) worship ministry (both) and video marketing (him), and both really enjoy stoking fires of prayer-revival in the local church. Contact Joey and find out more at https://linktr.ee/joeygeisel

While some churches Lynette Lewis reached out to were interested in networking, praying was side-lined. She shares a disappointment she encountered, “Three pastors who thought praying specifically for Hollywood was not good for various reasons.” 

Her experience highlights a reality some of the chapters face in engaging people to pray specifically for the entertainment industry. We must, as Hollywood Prayer Network not only pray for the industry, but for the prayer warriors who are interceding on the industry’s behalf.  She concludes with, “Prayer has been so important in my life and the life of my family that even if there was no HPN we would be praying for such an important mission field!”

April is a homeschooling mompreneur who has been talking to Jesus about and praying for the entertainment industry since she was a young girl. God likes to speak to April through lines from television shows and movies, and in 2018 she heard Him say, “Save Hollywood, save the world,” in a twist on the tagline from the show Heroes.

Around that time she found Hollywood Prayer Network and soon began receiving the newsletters. She prayed about how to be more involved, and God began moving her toward Bastrop where she finally arrived in July 2019. Since then she’s learned just how deep the industry actually runs in the area, and that she lives near what will soon be three movie studios/production companies: Wyldwood Studios and Studio 968/New Republic ten minutes to the north, a brand new as-yet-unnamed studio complex being built to the east. Troublemaker Studios is only about 20 minutes to the west. God planted her, without her prior knowledge, right in the middle of the industry she’s loved since childhood.

The pandemic slowed down April’s ability to get involved, but in June she approached HPN to see what she could do to help. Her goals for the local industry include regular gatherings of industry professionals to encourage each other and foster deep relationships that build strength, hope, and freedom; build church/industry networks for support; presence on local film sets for support in the midst of work; being a liaison between HPN and the local studios; and creating such an atmosphere in the industry that they don’t even want to produce anything without the support of HPN and local churches because of the drastic difference they see in value, quality, and sense of peace from pre- to post-production.

April is excited to see creativity increase, budgets increase, and doors open for more productions that bring honor and glory to Jesus. She’s ready to see lives changed in front of the screen because of the lives changed behind it.

Contact April at info@hpnbastrop.org