Karen Kingsbury's 'Someone Like You' Movie Shows Transformative Power of a Great Story

New York Times bestselling author Karen Kingsbury has been delighting readers for nearly 35 years. With more than 25 million copies of her award-winning books in print, Kingsbury has approached each paragraph, sentence, and word with tremendous care by highlighting redemptive themes of family reconciliation, sacrifice, and beauty from tragedy.

Based on her tremendous success it only seemed natural that the veteran author would continue to pursue a similar path, writing and publishing a book or two a year, with each topping various bestseller lists. But Kingsbury decided that even though many of her books were eventually made into major motion pictures, why not develop and produce the movies herself. Thus, she recently opened Karen Kingsbury Productions.

As her first project, Kingsbury has released Someone Like You, a movie that is currently streaming on Pure Flix as well as airing on Great American Family. The story originates from her 2020 book release of the same name which is part of the Baxter Family Collection series.

Initially released in theaters in April 2024, Someone Like You follows the heartbreaking journey of a young architect who loses his best friend to tragedy. While processing through his grief, he is compelled to launch a comprehensive search for his friend’s secret sister, a twin who was separated as an embryo prior to their birth. He never expects to fall in love but he does.

I recently sat down with Kingsbury to discuss where she finds inspiration for her stories, the challenges of starting and running a film production company, and why she was determined to make ‘Someone Like You’ her first independent movie project.

You have been writing and publishing stories for a long time. And as a writer, you have ideas and concepts floating through your mind for stories all the time. Where did the idea for Someone Like You come from?

Someone Like You came to me when I was at a speaking event, and then one of the people helping with the event had triplets. And someone pointed out the fact that those triplets were adopted as embryos and they implanted three and all three took. That's where those babies came from. They adopted the embryos. At that point, I did not know that embryo adoption was something you could do. And it stayed with me. I came home and then once something hooks my heart, that's where the Lord steps in and He gives me a movie or a book.

The Lord likes to put the story on my heart that is so visual. I have to write it. And this was a story of two sisters separated at the Petri dish. The biological mom has the first one, but cannot have more kids physically, and they donate the embryo to a doctor who knows another doctor. And this child, this little embryo, is then adopted by a couple that this first family, the biological family has no idea who that is. So, that is that until tragedy strikes with the biological family and they lose their daughter. And now there's a big question mark. This is now passed down to her best friend, who was in love with her, but they were just friends. He determines he's going to find this person if there's a brother or sister out there, so that he can tell them about her. It’s the last thing he can do for her. And in the process, he didn't mean to fall in love.

Someone Like You is a love story with redemptive themes of family reconciliation, sacrifice, and beauty from tragedy. The themes always seem to be at the heart of your writing. Why do you choose to focus on these so much?

I became a believer in Jesus in my mid-twenties. And I felt very rescued by Jesus. Still, to this day, His Word and His presence in my life is an everyday gift. I'm blessed to be able to know the difference. Not everybody has that. If you were raised in the faith, you may not have that. But as I became a believer, one thing I couldn't get past is how do these people who love Jesus walk through tragedy? How does that work for them? I had a woman in my Bible study who was so full of joy, but her husband had been killed by a drunk driver right in front of their teenage daughter while they were changing a tire on the side of the road. Somehow, she remained joyful.

I was like, what is this joy? It turned out that she had brought a Bible to the guy who was the drunk driver. She brought it to him in jail. And there were two things that I took from this. One, I knew that the people sitting next to me in church were not perfect. I wasn't perfect. There's this sense that once you cross the line and you're going to be a believer, now you're perfect. And you're dealing with nothing. But how do I get a good parking space or something? And that's just not true. There are so many hard things that believers go through and they desperately need, not only the Lord but each other. I wanted to wrestle through those kinds of stories that are really going on behind the happy smile on Sunday.

This leads me to ask, how often do you incorporate elements of your own life into your writing?

I have a sign in my kitchen that says, “Be Careful What You Say”. It's sort of a joke because truly, God gives me the stories like a movie in my heart. That's why we opened our own production company. Someone Like You is the very first movie from Karen Kingsbury Productions. It's the first time that I've been able to say, not only am I so thankful, I'm thankful for all the movies and TV shows made from my books of course. But this one looks like the one in my head. And it's not my life. It's nothing I've been through, but God just puts it there like a movie. And so, getting to do my own movie was so hard but it was wonderful and beautiful. It was cathartic too because it took this sort of imagery in my head and put it onto the actual screen. That doesn't feel anything like me. It feels like a completely true story. It feels like something that I literally heard from someone and got to write about.

As you just mentioned, this is the first movie you have produced from Karen Kingsbury Productions.  Did you always intend for your books to become movies or television series or has the cinematic component of your writing just sort of happened organically?

I think it's a little bit of both. When I finish a book and it's so visual, a lot of times I just pump my fist in the air. Like, yes, this is so good. And it's not about me. It's about what God has given me. When I finished writing Someone Like You, my first thought was, this is going to be a great movie. So, when I had a chance to be able to do one movie, my husband said, “If we have to sell everything,we’re going to do it.” We paid for it, we paid for the marketing, and it was going to be this one because it was a high concept. Embryo adoption, as you know, is an interesting topic and very cinematic. The movie has jet skis and a beautiful house that sits on the cliff of a lake, overlooking a lake. It was exactly what I wanted to do for our first movie. I'm really glad we chose it.

After people have watched Somebody Like You, what would you like your audience to get out of the viewing experience? What is your greatest hope for the film?

What I'm loving is what I'm hearing, that people are being so touched by it and are healing in their own relationships. It’s all about a deeper sense of it's going to be okay. It's already meeting my greatest hope. It's trending number one on Pure flix. And I think the actual heart and legs of this movie really have only just begun.

'Someone Like You’ is streaming right now on Pure Flix as well as airing on Great American Family. For more information please visit Great American Pure Flix.com.

WATCH A TRAILER FOR SOMEONE LIKE YOU: