A Feature Documentary Film & 33-Episode Television Series
A Feature Documentary Film & 33-Episode Television Series
The title of the film and series comes from the song The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Light — written and performed by Chaplain Ed Gilbert. His music became the spiritual soul of this project, and it was Ed and his wife who introduced Executive Director Brian Martindale to filmmaker Andrew Hamlet, forming the creative team now producing this film. The title captures everything this project is about: the families who have lived through the darkest nights of kidney disease, and the extraordinary light that arrives when a living donor steps forward and says yes.
The Darker the Night is being produced simultaneously as two distinct but interconnected media properties — a feature-length documentary film for theatrical release, and a 33-episode television series documenting each city on the Drive to 7000 summer journey.
A full-length cinematic documentary chronicling the complete Drive to 7000 story — the families in crisis, the donors who stepped forward, the hospitals doing extraordinary work, and the national movement being built across 33 cities. Filmed at Netflix production standards by Hamlet Studios.
One episode per city. Each episode is a self-contained story capturing the hospital visit, family interviews, donor recruitment events, and community voices from that stop on the journey. Broadcast live on the Good Karma Entertainment Network on Roku during filming. Full series confirmed for Amazon Prime Video.
Filming has already begun. Footage from NYU Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital was featured in a nationally broadcast Good Morning America segment. The film and series are being produced by Andrew Hamlet, Executive Director of Film and Television at Hamlet Studios, to the highest broadcast standards.
The Drive to 7000 is the event. The Darker the Night is the record of it. The two are inseparable — and that is what makes this project unlike any kidney donation campaign that has come before it.
The Drive to 7000 generates the human stories. The film captures them. Amazon and Roku deliver them to millions of viewers. And those viewers become the next generation of living kidney donors. The film is not just a document of the campaign — it is the campaign’s most powerful tool, continuing to recruit donors for years after the summer journey ends.
Kidneys for Kids was founded on a single belief: that a living kidney donor who has heard the right story at the right moment will say yes. Since 2022, that belief has been proven 18 times — 18 adults who heard a story and chose to give a kidney to a child. The Darker the Night is designed to multiply that effect by millions.
Nearly 2,000 children are waiting for a kidney transplant in America right now. 13 people die every day waiting. The US has never recorded 7,000 living kidney donations in a single year — in 2025, only 5,879 were recorded.
A living donor kidney reduces wait time from 5 years to 3–6 months, lasts 15–20 years vs. 8–12 for a deceased donor, costs the donor nothing, and does not affect the donor’s life expectancy. The barrier is not willingness — it is awareness.
A documentary changes minds in ways that press releases cannot. When a viewer sees a family’s real story — the dialysis, the waiting, the hope — and then sees the light that comes after a successful transplant, they are moved to act. That is the chain reaction this film is designed to create.
Amazon Prime Video reaches hundreds of millions of households. The Good Karma Entertainment Network broadcasts live to 14+ countries and all 50 states on Roku. Every viewer is a potential donor. Every share extends the campaign’s reach for years.
The campaign and film have the formal support of the most respected organizations in the kidney and transplant community. Kidneys for Kids is a 2026 voting member of OPTN — the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network — helping govern all organ transplants in the United States.
Whether you are a family ready to share your story, a potential living donor, a hospital partner, or a sponsor — there is a place for you in The Darker the Night. Your involvement could be the moment that inspires someone, somewhere, to say yes.
