Joey + Rory’s Rory Feek Launches Kickstarter for New Civil War Movie

Rory Feek, one-half of the husband-and-wife duo Joey + Rory, has launched a Kickstarter campaign to help fund a new movie, Josephine.

The film is about a Civil War soldier named John Robison, who wrote letters home to his wife, Josephine, while he was away fighting. Years ago, Feek discovered Robison's letters, which inspired Joey + Rory's song "Josephine."

"In 2013, I received an email from a man in Virginia who had seen our music video, and he said he knew of letters that Josephine had also written to John," Feek explains on the Kickstarter page. "When I found and read those letters, I was even more moved by the words she wrote and the love she clearly had for the husband that the war had separated her from. Over the next year and a half, my best friend Aaron Carnahan and I wrote Josephine's story into a full-length screenplay for a movie ... actually, we let her tell us the story that she wanted to tell.

"Page by page, we watched her wait for John until she could wait no more," he continues. "... We followed Josephine and her ragtag unit across three states -- over six months, against all odds, with nothing to go on but the belief in the one thing in the world she had left ... love."

Feek is seeking $100,000 to help fund the project. Incentives for donations include a digital version of the movie, a limited edition Josephine T-shirt, tickets to a private screening of the movie at the Feeks' Farmhouse Concert Theater and passes for a Q&A session and after-party.

"Our goal is always to be authentic and true to ourselves and the story that we’re trying to tell," Feek writes. "Unfortunately, making a movie is a whole different playing field. Most epic Civil War films are made for $30-$100 million and have almost unlimited talent and resources available to them. We don’t. So far, we’ve raised $1,000,000 to make our film and are stretching it as far as it can go. But at some point, there’s just not enough.

"We need some help," he urges. "We need your help. Besides making sure we have all we need to complete the production of the movie, we need to raise enough money for post-production -- special effects, editing, coloring, soundtrack and a hundred other things that we'll need to bring Josephine's story to life that way it deserves to be. We're asking people to take a few minutes and watch our video and then help in any way they can. If you’d like to see this movie come to life, then please give anything you feel like you can give."

The father of three admits that launching the Kickstarter campaign wasn't an easy decision to make, but he's willing to do it for the sake of this project.

"It’s hard for me to ask people to help," he acknowledges. "I mostly like to give and hope that good things come back. But with a dream this big and this many people counting on me ... I have to have some help. I’m trying to do something incredible with some incredibly talented people that I love, and we would love to have help from you and anyone else that believes in the power of love and wants to be part of a community that makes a movie together."

The Josephine Kickstarter campaign runs through May 17. Find out more, including donation information, on the Kickstarter page.