A few days ago I sat in one of the rooms where the producers of a new film, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” were screening a trailer and passing the word to interested individuals and groups. It’s the same pre-release publicity approach used recently for other Hollywood offerings, including documentaries. My emotion was almost as much one of relief as excitement. It is going to be a terrific film treatment of the whole controversy, and far fairer than any we have encountered.

For two years we have known that the Hollywood actor/critic/comedian/writer Ben Stein was making a film with a company called Premise Media that would inspect the controversy over Darwinian theory and intelligent design. Let’s just say that some people at Discovery Institute were eager to cooperate, others more cautious. We have been burned so often by sweet-talking film-makers and television people who wanted to hear about “the science” and to hear our “side” of the controversy, only to be appalled by the one-sided, selectively edited final products that resulted.

So, while I have always liked Ben Stein and am astounded by the extent of his name familiarity, I had to wonder along the way whether he really would “get” the truth about the ruthless suppression of the culture war over Darwinism and its implications for our society. I know now that he does and it is a huge satisfaction.

Today Premise Media put out a press release announcing the new film, which, it happens, will premier on Darwin’s birthday, next February 12. A key motif is academic freedom, as it should be (see the last couple of posts on Discovery Blog). Stein is truly and properly outraged at the mixture of ignorance and condescension he has encountered from Darwinists and from learning first hand of their ruthless disregard of science’s normal openness to new ideas and new information. He also finds them amusing.

The Premise Media press release is here. Read it through. Meanwhile, I know that between now and next February the Darwinists will use all their power and connections to try to stifle or discredit this film; that’s their standard m.o. Let them. It isn’t going to work. “Expelled” obviously is going to be an enormously important event in the historic struggle between Darwinism and its scientific critics.