Newsbites: Chosen! Brian! Wingfeather! Angel!

Updates on a bunch of Angel Studios productions, plus a Monty Python show.

The crowd presses against Jesus (Jonathan Roumie) in The Chosen.

Life continues to be a bit busy at my end, but I figured I should catch up on a few news items. Just a heads-up: this batch will be very Angel Studios-heavy.

Lionsgate gets worldwide distribution rights to The Chosen

Many outlets reported this week that Lionsgate, the studio behind The Shack and Jesus Revolution, has acquired worldwide distribution rights to The Chosen, the popular life-of-Jesus series that is now shooting its fourth season. Angel Studios—the company that helped crowd-fund the series in the first place—issued a statement afterwards clarifying who, exactly, has rights to what at the moment. In a nutshell: The Chosen Inc. is handling theatrical releases by itself now, without Angel Studios;¹ Angel Studios and The Chosen Inc. share exclusive streaming rights for the show’s first post-theatrical window; and now Lionsgate, working directly with The Chosen Inc., can broker distribution deals with other streaming services after that window. The first season or two have already been available on services like Tubi, Netflix, and Kanopy for quite some time, and it sounds like the Lionsgate deal will build on that.²

Stage production of Monty Python’s Life of Brian in the works

Monty Python co-star John Cleese is developing a new stage version of 1979’s Life of Brian, and The Daily Mail has some details about that—though a few of those details have since been disputed by the Pythons themselves. Among the details that are not disputed, as far as I can tell: Pilate’s wife—previously seen only in a deleted scene from the film—is now named Fiona and will fall in love with Brian; and Brian himself will not get crucified this time. Among the details that are currently disputed: Cleese says he has no intention of deleting the scene in which a Jewish rebel named Stan says he wants to be a woman named Loretta; and fellow Python Eric Idle says he is not involved with Cleese’s show at all. (Idle then quipped that his song ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’—which is sung during the film’s crucifixion scene—must have been cut from the show too, and Cleese responded that this is “untrue”.) Idle himself turned Life of Brian into an oratorio called Not the Messiah (He’s a Very Naughty Boy) in 2007.

A Hobbit joins The Wingfeather Saga

The producers of The Wingfeather Saga, an animated series based on a series of fantasy novels by Andrew Peterson, revealed on Thursday that Billy Boyd—who played the cheerful Hobbit Pippin in The Lord of the Rings—has joined the Wingfeather voice cast as a villainous character known as the Overseer. That makes Boyd the second member of the Fellowship to join an Angel Studios production, following Sean Astin’s involvement with The Shift, a sci-fi film coming to theatres in January 2024. The first season of The Wingfeather Saga concluded back in March, and the second season is aiming for a release later this year. The announcement of Billy Boyd’s casting, and an interview with Boyd himself, begin at the 25-minute mark in the video below:

Angel Studios announces upcoming slate

Angel Studios announced a bunch of new projects, and gave updates on a few existing ones, at their ‘Illuminate 2023’ event two weeks ago. Among other things, they revealed that Sound of Freedom—the human-trafficking drama starring Jim Caviezel that was filmed back in 2018—is coming to theatres July 4, and they are now looking for investors to help cover the costs of prints & advertising. (This is similar to how His Only Son was filmed independently in 2019 and distributed by Angel Studios with a crowd-funded P&A budget earlier this year.) The studio’s upcoming new shows include Gabriel and the Guardians, “an anime style series based on traditional biblical narratives,” and The Axiom Chronicles, an animated series “about one teen’s fight to save his people from robotic rule,” which Angel co-founder Jeffrey Harmon said was “based on the story of Moses, if Moses was trying to escape from AI robots.”³ You can see some concept art and sizzle reels, and a trailer for Sound of Freedom, below:

1. Interestingly, The Chosen Season 3: Finale—the first theatrical release to be handled by The Chosen Inc. without Angel Studios—came out almost two months before Angel Studios launched its own theatrical-distribution division in March. It will be interesting to see if The Chosen Inc. sticks with Fathom Events for its future theatrical releases, or if it decides to partner with Angel Studios, which will end up streaming the episodes anyway.

2. I find it interesting that Lionsgate is handling worldwide distribution for The Chosen, as the studio’s track record with “faith-based” films overseas has been all over the place, at least to go by the figures at Box Office Mojo. On the one hand, The Shack—with $39.6 million overseas—seems to be the highest-grossing “faith-based” film by far, internationally, that wasn’t produced by Mel Gibson. On the other hand, films like American Underdog and Jesus Revolution have made virtually nothing overseas. Then again, The Chosen is a streaming series, not a movie, so it’s looking for a different kind of distribution anyway.

3. This characterization is fascinating to me, because the word “robot” literally comes from a Slavic word meaning “slave” (and the English word “slave” comes from “Slav”!), but in The Axiom Chronicles it sounds like the robots are the ones who have enslaved everyone else.