Jon and Andy Erwin, the movie-making brothers from Birmingham, have been working their way to this moment.

When they were making the movie “Woodlawn,” which told the story of a 1970s revival at a racially tense high school campus while “Bear” Bryant was recruiting star Black player Tony Nathan, they stumbled onto something.

It was a Time magazine cover that touted “The Jesus Revolution” from 1971.

“This one’s just very special, very personal,” Jon Erwin said. “I remember when I discovered this magazine way back in 2015, making the movie ‘Woodlawn,’ which took place in Birmingham. It was part of this movement.”

Andy said his brother got obsessed with that Time cover story, and another from 1966 that declared “God is Dead.” The Erwins wondered what happened in between the two cover stories, on the loss of faith, and the hippies who found it.

“Jesus Revolution” tries to answer that question and brings hippie history to life.

As they finished up their last movie, “American Underdog,” a sports-and-faith biopic of NFL star Kurt Warner, Jon said the time was right to focus on “Jesus Revolution,” Andy said.

“He traced the beginnings out to California, to Calvary Chapel, and this moment with Chuck Smith, who Kelsey Grammer plays in our film, and then this hippie evangelist that Jonathan Roumie plays called Lonnie Frisbee,” said Andy, a producer on the film. “It was such a fascinating moment in time, where it was overtly Christian, and faith-oriented, but also it was very counter-culture, and an invitation to the down-trodden and the outcast and the people that the church had kind of pushed out the door.”

Jon, who co-wrote the script and co-directed the movie, wanted Kelsey Grammer to play Smith. Grammer said he was doing soul-searching, looking for a project that would be meaningful and important, and at that moment found that his agent had left the “Jesus Revolution” script on his desk.

Grammer plays a pastor whose church is struggling to stay afloat, when the hippie evangelist Lonnie Frisbee arrives at his house. The hippie evangelist challenges the stodgy pastor to welcome other hippies into the church. The chemistry between ‘Frasier’ star Grammer and Roumie, who plays Jesus in the TV series “The Chosen,” sizzles.

“They’re phenomenal partners in this movie,” Jon said. “Every scene they’re in is just phenomenal.”

A teenage Greg Laurie, who would become a megachurch pastor as a result of the events in the movie, is played by Joel Courtney. His wife, Cathe, is played by Anna Grace Barlow, a Mountain Brook High School graduate whose parents are Birmingham doctors.

The Lauries are drawn in by the charisma of Frisbee, along with thousands of other California hippies who went from seeking meaning in drugs and free love to embracing Jesus and being baptized in the Pacific Ocean.

The Erwins filmed for four weeks in Mobile and one week in California, capturing scenic vistas of the coast where the baptisms took place.

“I just can’t wait for audiences to see this movie,” Jon said. “It’s my favorite movie to watch with an audience of any movie we’ve ever made. I just can’t wait for people to see it in theaters. It’s a wonderful movie to see with a group of people. I never had a movie where people cheered during the movie.”

When Grammer watched the movie the first time with his wife, Kayte, she cried and told him it was the best thing he’d ever done, Grammer said in a recent appearance on the “Live” morning show with Ryan Seacrest and Kelly Ripa. Grammer, in tears talking about it, agreed.

“We are living in a very similar moment to the late sixties,” Jon said. “The last time the words ‘social civil war’ were uttered were the late sixties. It’s a very similar time of division and despair. This movement sprung out of that. People just got desperate enough to say, ‘We need help, we need hope, we need God.’ I think we’re back there.”

The movie opens in theaters nationwide on Friday, Feb. 24. It features a small but pivotal role for Shaun Weiss, a former child actor who played Goldberg in “The Mighty Ducks.” He had struggled with drug addiction, homelessness and had been through rehabilitation at the time he was cast as a paraplegic Vietnam veteran with a need for spiritual healing who finds faith during an encounter with Frisbee.

“I feel like there’s a surge of hunger from the audience,” Andy said. “There’s an opportunity for it to really find its audience in a significant way. So, we’ll see.”