The Unbreakable Boy Movie (2025) Stream & Watch - Trailer | Jon Gunn

The Unbreakable Boy is an upcoming American biographical drama film directed and written by Jon Gunn. It is based on the book The Unbreakable Boy: A Father's Fear, a Son's Courage, and a Story of Unconditional Love, authored by Scott Michael LeRette and Susy Flory, which is based on a true story, and stars Zachary Levi in the lead role alongside Meghann Fahy, Jacob Laval, Drew Powell, Gavin Warren, and Patricia Heaton. 

Lionsgate announced a feature-length film based on the book in November 2020, with Gunn attached as writer and director. Filming began that same month in Oklahoma, and wrapped in December. The Unbreakable Boy is scheduled to be released by Lionsgate in the United States on February 21, 2025.

Austin is a boy with both a rare brittle-bone disease and autism. But what makes Austin truly unique is his joyous, funny, life-affirming worldview that transforms and unites everyone around him.

Based on a true story, writer/director Jon Gunn’s The Unbreakable Boy features a scene where titular bone-brittle autist Austin LaRette (a sweet, hyper, and enthusiastic Jacob Laval) loses his cool to the school bully, shouting, “You’re a cliché.” That somewhat encapsulates what’s wrong here. This is also a disingenuous film, to put it politely.

While the first act takes viewers through how Austin’s parents met and his early childhood, complete with narration wholly embracing his distinct personality, it eventually settles into a road to redemption story for his father, Scott (Zachary Levi, admittedly likable in the early stages, even if his real-life self is anything but likable lately) who gradually crumbles under the pressure and hardships of raising a child with extra needs (his other child, Logan, didn’t inherit brittle bone disease from his mother), slipping further and further into alcoholism. Suddenly, the self-professed faith-based filmmaker is peppering in the importance of God on the road to recovery for a character who, until then, was indifferent to religion.

It’s one thing to make a faith-based film and something no one should have any objection to on the surface; they can be good movies like anything else if done right (last year’s Best Christmas Pageant Ever quickly comes to mind, which came from Dallas Jenkins, showrunner of The Chosen.) It shows respect to the audience by being upfront about it. With this and Jon Gunn’s last film (the Hilary Swank-led Ordinary Angels), the narrative is otherwise grounded and about something (here it is the unique mind of an autistic boy with brittle bone disease and the lifelong challenges he will face, whereas before it was the power of community) before pulling the rug out to inject its agenda. It’s manipulative and misguided, with nearly the entire second half undercutting Austin, who should theoretically be at the film’s center.

Ill-advised, traditional conservative values are reinforced throughout. Yes, some people do change, and this is a true story, but at one point (and this is teased during the medias res opening), Scott drunkenly drives home with his children and gets into a high-impact car accident. Rather than stick with the perspective of mom Teresa (Meghann Fahy), there are scenes of Scott with his parents, told to smash a porcelain cup on the ground for the eye-rolling metaphor that, much like how his son is constantly breaking bones (which is played off as an awkward running joke), he is the truly broken one.