'The Unbreakable Boy': Film shot in Oklahoma coming to theaters soon

"The Unbreakable Boy," a faith-based novel turned movie shot in Oklahoma, is set to arrive in theatres next month.

Based on the novel of the same name, the story is inspired by the real-life experiences of Austin LeRette, who has autism and was born with a rare bone disease.

The film will feature LeRette's experiences and his extraordinary view of the world, but before it releases, News 9 spoke with the author of "The Unbreakable Boy" and Austin's father, Scott LeRette.

Q: This book is about your special son, Austin. Tell me a little bit about the story.

LeRette: It's easy to look at it, and just think it's this cute story about an autistic kid, but actually I wrote it originally, the notes and the little booklets that I scribbled in for myself for purely selfish purposes. For me, it ended up being my life story. It just so happens that we have this particular character that's a part of it, our son, who's autistic and has osteogenesis imperfecta, and that is extremely important to the whole story.

Q: What is the takeaway of this movie?

LeRette: In essence, we didn't intend on doing this, but it's a love story, and love is one of the biggest things as well as my faith. There's an underlying theme and thread of faith through the whole thing, but I think the reason that Kingdom Story Company, Lionsgate, and even HarperCollins with my book, gravitated to it and embraced it was because everybody is flawed and messed up and broken. That's what we are, and my hope is that anybody who steps inside the movie theater walks away with something because they can relate it to at least one small thing in their own life.

Q: This was filmed in Oklahoma, tell me about some of the sites we might recognize in the movie.

LeRette: I think there's only one with that, it's where we're the apartment was filmed, and I want to say [it was] the Kingman building.

Q: The big red carpet premiere is Thursday night here in Oklahoma City, how excited are you?

LeRette: It's crazy because we're doing this tonight with the Oklahoma Film Commission, which is just a wonderful experience to do that all here. And then we have an event, a mini red carpet in Omaha, where Peter Fashionelli, who is also my business partner, and Zach Levi, who stars in it, will do one in Omaha, and then the big red carpet is in New York City in three weeks.

News 9 also spoke to Austin LeRette, for whom the film's story is about.

Q: Austin, what did you think about that movie that is being made about you and your life?

Austin LeRette: I'm excited. I'm just excited to be here, excited to be on live TV, and I'm excited for my dad's movie. One thing I wanted to say on live TV is two people besides my parents, that one person I never gave up on, was my friend Tyler that I grew up with ... Tyler is my best friend, and he's been my best friend ever since I was a little and I knew we were gonna be best friends when we were older, and my brother, Logan, who I look up to as like another father figure and a best friend.