Newsbites: Bethlehem! Jacob! ChosenCon!

New announcements about three upcoming Bible-themed projects. (Well, two of them are definitely Bible-themed. The third, we can only speculate about for now...)

David Helling, the director of His Only Son, makes his pitch for Jacob in a video on the Angel Studios website.

Adam Anders’ Nativity musical gets a title

I haven’t seen this in my news feeds yet, but a few hours ago I got a press release from Sony Pictures which, among other things, mentioned that Adam Anders’ Nativity musical now has a title: Journey to Bethlehem. This is very similar to the original title—Road to Bethlehem—which the film had when it was first announced back in 2020. The film, which stars Antonio Banderas as King Herod and Lecrae as the angel Gabriel, was filmed in Spain earlier this year and is coming out on November 10.

Angel Studios raising funds for Jacob, the sequel to His Only Son

Now that His Only Son—a dramatization of the life of Abraham—is a bona fide box-office hit, director David Helling is moving on to his next project: a movie about “the entire life of Jacob, beginning with the death of Abraham”.¹ Angel Studios, the company that distributed His Only Son and produces streaming series like The Chosen, has set up a webpage where potential investors can express interest in the project; as of this writing, 824 people have expressed interest to the tune of $516,771, which is already more than double the budget on His Only Son. Three questions: If this film covers the entire life of Jacob, does that mean it will effectively cover the life of his son Joseph, too, all the way up to Jacob’s death in Egypt? Will it cover the rape of Dinah and the massacre committed by her vengeful brothers? And is it safe to assume the pre-incarnate Jesus will appear in this film as the mysterious figure who wrestles with Jacob, gives him a limp, and gives him the new name Israel (Genesis 32:24-32)?

The Chosen will announce a “new project” in October

The Chosen series creator Dallas Jenkins hosted another livestream yesterday, and in it he announced that the series is getting its own fan convention—technically called The Chosen Insiders Conference, but also called ChosenCon 2023—in October. Along the way, at the 19:43 mark in the video below, he also said, “We are developing a new project right now,” and he said fans would get their first “glimpse” of the project at that conference. I assume this has something to do with the “bigger universe” that the show’s new president of production talked about last week, but who knows…?

1. I have to say, I laughed when I heard that Helling was going to jump straight from Abraham to Jacob, because I’ve been saying for years now that Isaac—the son of Abraham and the father of Jacob—often gets skipped over in series like this, relegated to a supporting role in the stories of his relatives. And now he’s being skipped over again! (Thankfully, there is at least one film that makes him more of a central figure: the Arabic film Isaac and Jacob.)