Newsbites: Testament! The Chosen! House of David! The King of Kings... in Korean!
Two New Testament shows launch new seasons online; the Wall Street Journal looks at the money behind shows like House of David; and a Squid Game co-star joins the cast of The King of Kings.
Testament, The Chosen premiere new seasons
Two New Testament shows launched new seasons with new livestreams yesterday.
First, Testament—a modernization of the book of Acts—streamed its first episode on YouTube and Facebook, along with an intro by series creator Paul Syrstad.
The episode starts at the 35-minute mark in the video below:
And second, The Chosen streamed the first episode of Season 5, along with an intro by series creator Dallas Jenkins.
The episode starts at the 21-minute mark in the video below:
Syrstad said the Testament livestream would be taken down after 24 hours, and I assume the Chosen livestream will be taken down eventually too—or at least cut down to the pre- and post-show footage. But don’t worry, if the episodes are gone by the time you see this post, you can watch them on their official home platforms:
The first two episodes of Testament are already streaming on the Angel app and website, and future episodes will come out every Monday until July 21.
The Chosen Season 5 will start rolling out on Prime Video in the US on June 15, and in Canada, the UK, Latin America, and other territories on July 13.
It will then become available on The Chosen’s app sometime in September.
A few key announcements were made at the beginning and end of these livestreams:
Future episodes of Testament will be streamed on YouTube and Facebook one week after they appear on the Angel platform (so, for example, on June 16, Episode 3 will premiere on the Angel app while Episode 2—which is already available on the Angel app—will stream on YouTube and Facebook, etc.).
The Chosen Season 6, aka the Crucifixion season, is currently being filmed in Matera, Italy—which is where many other Bible movies have been shot, including Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew, Bruce Beresford’s King David, Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, Catherine Hardwicke’s The Nativity Story, Cyrus Nowrasteh’s The Young Messiah, Timur Bekmambetov’s Ben-Hur, Garth Davis’s Mary Magdalene, and Jeymes Samuel’s The Book of Clarence. (I don’t believe The Chosen’s livestream mentioned Matera’s history with the genre at all.)
The first six episodes of The Chosen Season 6 will come out in the second half of 2026. The seventh and final episode (“a super-sized episode”, not “two episodes just combined”) will be released in theatres globally in March 2027.
It sounds like Season 6 will tie the Crucifixion to the entire history of the Bible, including Creation and the Fall—similar, perhaps, to how Mel Gibson’s movie about the Resurrection will have flashbacks to the Old Testament.
There will be a livestream for The Chosen Season 5 Episode 3 on June 18 at 5pm PT / 8pm ET, four days before it begins streaming on Prime Video in the US.
Finally, here are the teasers for the first two episodes of Testament:
The Wall Street Journal profiles the conservative lawyer who is helping to finance studios like the one that made House of David
The Wall Street Journal has a profile of Leonard Leo, a conservative lawyer and co-chair of the Federalist Society who has been “secretly helping bankroll Wonder Project,” the studio behind the Prime Video series House of David.
A few key excerpts:
Armed with a $1.6 billion gift from a Chicago industrialist, believed to be one of the largest single contributions to any politically active group in U.S. history, Leo wants to make America’s culture more conservative. That might sound as quixotic as killing a giant with a sling and a small stone.
But Leo, unbounded by the pressures of re-election or dependence on outside money, is a rare conservative, who, after being cast out of Trump’s inner circle, remains free to pursue his own vision of what will make America great again, leveraging the soft power of mass entertainment and the hard power of the courts. . . .
Teneo, one of the groups funded by Leo’s billion-dollar windfall, is a networking club of several hundred conservatives in politics and American corporations, recruited before they hit 40. . . .
Teneo, founded in 2008, never raised more than a million dollars in a year until Leo took an interest in the group about five years ago. By 2023, it had grown into a $7 million-a-year organization. Under Leo’s guidance, Teneo has put resources into a subgroup focused exclusively on entertainment. It convenes its own conference each fall in Nashville, Tenn., which has become the hub for a new wave of conservative and Christian filmmakers, including two of its biggest luminaries, the brothers Andrew Erwin and Jon Erwin, both Teneo members.
Jon Erwin’s studio, Wonder Project, made the Amazon hit “House of David.” . . .
Leo’s network purposefully invests in studios rather than individual movies. Past films with a conservative point of view—“The Passion of the Christ” and “Thank You for Smoking”—grabbed attention but didn’t do much to change Hollywood. Leo and allies are betting that investing in people and movie studios will cement a conservative strain in entertainment culture for years.
The article notes that one of the other companies that gets funding from Leo’s network is Sycamore Studios, which was founded by Timothy Reckart, director of the animated Christmas movie The Star.
The article also says that Season 2 of House of David “is now in production”, but back on May 9, series star Michael Iskander—who plays David himself—said on his Instagram page that filming on Season 2 had just wrapped. So, it would seem that Season 2 has already been in post-production for the past month.
For what it’s worth, Leo’s network isn’t the only source of funding for The Wonder Project. When the studio was founded two years ago, its investors included Lionsgate—the studio behind The Hunger Games and John Wick but also the studio behind The Shack, Jesus Revolution, and the upcoming sequel to The Passion of the Christ—and horror movie mogul Jason Blum (Get Out, Five Nights at Freddy’s, etc.).
Squid Game co-star leads The King of Kings’ Korean voice cast
The King of Kings—the animated life-of-Jesus movie that became one of the most successful “faith-based” films of all time a couple months ago—is finally getting a theatrical release in its native South Korea. And to that end, it’s getting dubbed in Korean.
Mofac Studios—the South Korean company that made the film—announced some key members of the new voice cast last week.
Lee Byung-hun—best-known in North America for his roles in The Magnificent Seven, the G.I. Joe movies, and Squid Game (where he plays the shadowy Front Man)—will provide the voice of Charles Dickens, who tells the story of Jesus to his son. Dickens was voiced in the English-language version of the film by Kenneth Branagh.
Other Korean actors who have joined the cast include:
Jin Sun-kyu as Jesus — English version: Oscar Isaac
Yang Dong-geun as Peter — English version: Forest Whitaker
Kwon Oh-joong as King Herod — English version: Mark Hamill
Jang Gwang as High Priest Caiaphas — English version: Ben Kingsley
Cha In-pyo as Pontius Pilate — English version: Pierce Brosnan
Honey Lee as Catherine Dickens — English version: Uma Thurman
Choi Ha-ri as Walter Dickens — English version: Roman Griffin Davis
The King of Kings grossed $60.2 million in North America—and passed Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite to become the top-grossing South Korean film in North America—after opening in the US and Canada the Friday before Palm Sunday.
Box Office Mojo says the film has earned another $6.3 million internationally. It is currently set to come out in its native South Korea next month, in July.
Sources: K-Vibe, Korea JoongAng Daily, The Korea Herald.
Upcoming Bible movies and TV shows:
now-July 21, 2025 — Testament: Season 1 (streaming: Angel Studios, with episodes streaming on YouTube and Facebook one week after their Angel debut)
June 15-29, 2025 — The Chosen: Season 5 (streaming: Prime Video - US only)
June 18, 2025 — The Chosen: Season 5: Episode 3 (streaming: YouTube)
July 13-27, 2025 — The Chosen: Season 5 (streaming: Prime Video - international)
September 5, 2025 — Light of the World (theatrical: Salvation Poem Project)
December 19, 2025 — Zero A.D. (theatrical: Angel Studios)
2025 (no month specified) — The Carpenter’s Son (theatrical: Magnolia)
2025 (no month specified) — The Chosen Adventures (streaming)
2025 (no month specified) — The Promised Land: Season 1 (streaming)
2025 (no month specified) — R&B (streaming: Netflix)
Spring 2026 — The Faithful (television: Fox)
second half of 2026 — The Chosen: Season 6: Episodes 1-6 (streaming: Prime Video)
March 12, 2027 — The Chosen: Season 6: Finale (theatrical: Amazon MGM)
March 31, 2028 — The Chosen: Season 7: Premiere (theatrical: Amazon MGM)
no release date specified — David (theatrical)
no release date specified — House of David: Season 2 (streaming: Prime Video)
no release date specified — Jacob (theatrical: Angel Studios)
no release date specified — Judas’ Gospel (theatrical…?)
no release date specified — The Resurrection of the Christ (theatrical: Lionsgate)
who knows when Malick will finish it — The Way of the Wind (theatrical)