Journey to Bethlehem round-up: two new clips and a curious request for ticket-buyers

Should people buy tickets to movies they aren't planning to see, just to boost the movies' grosses?

The sisters three (left to right): Rebekah (Stephanie Gil), Mary (Fiona Palomo), and Deborah (Moriah) in Journey to Bethlehem.

Journey to Bethlehem hasn’t had the easiest time in theatres. Two weeks ago, it had one of the worst opening weekends of any biblical or “faith-based” film in wide release, and last weekend it fell out of the top ten altogether.

Still, it’s a holiday-themed musical, and the holiday season is just getting started—the American Thanksgiving takes place tomorrow—so the studio is still putting out new videos to help promote the film and hopefully attract a larger audience.

Chief among these are two new clips that came out yesterday, both of which feature key musical sequences from the film.

The first is ‘Mary’s Getting Married’, in which Mary reacts negatively to the news that her parents have arranged for her to be married to a total stranger, and her sisters try to persuade her the marriage won’t be all that bad:

The second is a duet between Joseph and, uh, Joseph, as he debates whether to believe Mary’s story about a miraculous pregnancy or condemn her for cheating on him:

With the arrival of these two clips, there are now five clips from the film on YouTube, representing roughly 16 minutes of footage, or nearly one-sixth of the film. The figures grow to six clips, 19½ minutes, and nearly one-fifth of the film if you count the music video for one of the end-credits songs, ‘Brand New Life’.¹

In addition to the two new clips, the studio released a few videos late last week encouraging people to see the movie in theatres.

I mentioned on Thursday that The Chosen creator Dallas Jenkins had recorded a video endorsing the movie, which was released on the studio’s YouTube channel.

The day after that, the studio released two more videos, both very brief, in which people who were involved in making the film encouraged potential audience members to buy tickets now and watch the movie on the big screen while they can.

First, there was this 29-second video from director Adam Anders:

And then there was this 59-second video from co-star Joel Smallbone, of the band For King & Country; he plays Herod’s son Antipater in the film:

Smallbone says something in his video that I think is worth noting. At the 37-second mark, he says:

See it. See it again. And if you can’t see it this weekend, just grab a ticket. Just in solidarity and support. Luke and I worked on a film called Unsung Hero. We want to put more films on the silver screen, and you’re the ones that decide it.

Jenkins said something very similar in his own video last Thursday. At the 4:03 mark, he said:

I really encourage you, right now, whatever you’re doing, this weekend, go see it in theatres, if what I’m saying speaks to you. And if not, that’s fine, too. Or even just buy tickets, even if you’re not going to see it. I did that once, just a couple days ago, I bought tickets for Journey to Bethlehem, a night that I wasn’t going to get a chance to see it, and then I saw it another night, because we have to— These things need to be successful so that we can do more of them.

I might be forgetting something, but I think this is the first time I’ve heard filmmakers and their supporters openly tell people, through official studio channels, to buy tickets without using them, just to support a filmmaker or a genre.

In fact, as I was thinking about these comments, it occurred to me that I had actually heard Jenkins say pretty much the opposite of this a year ago, when he hosted a livestream to hype the theatrical release of The Chosen Season 3. At the 7:58 mark in that video, he said:

Now here’s the thing. When we did the Christmas special last year and we put that in theatres, I remember showing up on one of the nights, and went into the theatre. It was sold out, right? All the tickets had been purchased, and I walked in and like half the seats were taken. Don’t do that, where you buy the tickets and don’t show up. First of all, it wastes your money—although we appreciate it, I mean, we still get the money, but I don’t want that to happen, I want you to see it—but second of all, if you purchase it and then don’t end up going, well that’s a seat that someone else could have seen it, and we want more people to see it! So if you’re going to pre-buy tickets now, put a reminder in your phone or something, just so that you don’t forget to go, and if you end up not getting to go, cancel your purchase, get your refund, and then let someone else do it. We want to have full theatres.

On top of that, I was reminded of how the studio behind Sound of Freedom had to deny allegations last summer that their film owed its success to “astroturfing”, i.e. the practice of buying out theatres without putting actual people in those seats, thereby creating a false impression of grassroots support.

So it would seem, on the surface, that there are a couple of contradictions here:

• Last year, Jenkins said don’t buy tickets if you’re not going to use them; and now, he’s saying people should buy tickets even if they’re not going to use them.

• Everyone seemed to agree last summer that there was something unseemly about buying unused tickets just to prop up a movie’s grosses—that’s why the studio behind Sound of Freedom made a point of denying that it had done that—but now another studio is actively encouraging people to do that.

So, what to make of all this? A few quick thoughts:

• For starters, I don’t really see a contradiction between Jenkins’ past and present comments, because he made them in completely different contexts.

  • Last year, he was dealing with extremely high demand for tickets to theatrical screenings of an extremely popular show, and he wanted fans of the show to enjoy the communal big-screen experience as much as possible; what’s more, the screenings were booked through a company that specializes in limited theatrical events that usually don’t last more than a few days. So there were only so many opportunities to see that show on the big screen, and Jenkins wanted as many fans as possible to have that opportunity.

  • This year, on the other hand, he is supporting a film that is barely selling any tickets at all despite getting a regular open-ended release from a major movie studio. Journey to Bethlehem’s per-screen average last weekend—the weekend after the studio released the videos from Jenkins and Smallbone—was the lowest, by far, of any film in the top fourteen, so there was basically no danger that anyone who wanted to see the film would be unable to do so.

• Second, it makes a difference who’s buying the tickets.

  • A distributor shouldn’t lie to the public by buying out theatres and claiming its movie is a hit. But consumers can buy whatever they want, and they can do whatever they want with the tickets that they buy. Where things get tricky is in the in-between space, where the distributor actively tells consumers to buy tickets without using them, which is effectively what Sony/Affirm did by sharing these videos on its official social-media channels.

  • And just to be clear, I am making a distinction between the people who recorded these videos and the distributor that posted them. I think Jenkins is essentially speaking as one consumer to another in his video. He had no hand in making the film, and I don’t think he did anything “tricky” by giving the advice that he gave. It’s the distributor sharing the video on its official channels that gets into “tricky” territory, especially if the distributor is sharing other videos from other people who give the same advice.

• I get the impulse behind “solidarity”. I get the impulse behind wanting a film to do well so that you can get more films like it down the road. (Every time I remember what a box-office disappointment Exodus: Gods & Kings was, I wish it had done better so there’d be more big-budget Bible movies. And that was a film I had rather mixed feelings about.) But if someone thinks a film looks subpar, they shouldn’t feel obliged to support it just so other films get made. Especially if they think there’s a good chance those other films will be subpar, too.

Finally, these videos make it sound like the fate of “faith-based” films is hanging in the balance, and I honestly don’t know that that’s true.

This year alone, we’ve had some pretty successful “faith-based” films like The Blind and Jesus Revolution, and of course The Chosen has been doing really well theatrically for a TV show. Affirm Films might be in trouble, following the back-to-back failures of Journey to Bethlehem and Big George Foreman, but they’ve got another Kendrick brothers movie coming out next year, and those always do really well.

So I wouldn’t worry just yet. The health of a genre can be measured, in part, by how easily it can take its failures in stride. And there are enough “faith-based” films in the pipeline—from The Shift and Christmas with The Chosen next month to The Chosen Season 4 and Ordinary Angels in February and Cabrini in March—that I don’t think one relatively modest stumble like this will affect the genre as a whole.

Previous videos for Journey to Bethlehem:

• The teaser trailer (April 28, 2023)

• The official trailer (September 14, 2023)

• The ‘Heart of Journey to Bethlehem’ featurette (September 20, 2023)

• The Mary and Joseph featurette (September 29, 2023)

• The Mary’s sisters featurette (October 3, 2023)

• The Antipater featurette (October 6, 2023)

• The Fig (donkey) featurette (October 10, 2023)

• The ‘Can We Make This Work’ clip (October 13, 2023)

• The King Herod featurette (October 20, 2023)

• The Gabriel featurette (October 25, 2023)

• The ‘Brand New Life’ music video and featurette, the ‘Gift of Giving’ promo, and the Catholic and Protestant screening reactions (October 27, 2023)

• The Wise Men featurette (October 31, 2023)

• The ‘Married Collaborators’ featurette (November 3, 2023)

• The ‘In My Blood’ clip (November 4, 2023)

• The Mary featurette (November 7, 2023)

• The Joseph featurette (November 9, 2023)

• The ‘Mother to a Savior and King’ clip, the ‘A Story Worth Sharing’, ‘God Is with Us’, and ‘What We Know’ videos for local church use, and the ‘Dallas Jenkins Shoutout’ video (November 16, 2023)

Other previous posts on Journey to Bethlehem:

• ‘Has The Road to Bethlehem not been filmed yet?’ (August 19, 2022)

• ‘Adam Anders’ Nativity musical now filming in Spain’ (February 23, 2023)

• ‘Adam Anders’ Nativity musical gets a title’ (April 3, 2023)

• ‘Exclusive: Journey to Bethlehem director Adam Anders on his years-long quest to make a musical about the Nativity’ (October 23, 2023)

• ‘The Journey to Bethlehem soundtrack is here’ (November 3, 2023)

• ‘Box office: The Marvels, Journey to Bethlehem get the holiday season off to a rocky start’ (November 13, 2023)

• ‘A few thoughts on Journey to Bethlehem’ (November 16, 2023)

1. Just to recap, here is the track list for the soundtrack album, with links to the movie clips featuring these songs that have been released so far:

• O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (0:18)

• Journey to Bethlehem (1:47)

• Mary’s Getting Married (3:34) — see above

• Good to Be King (2:57)

• Can We Make This Work (2:46)

• Mother to a Savior and King (3:54)

• The Ultimate Deception (2:55) — see above

• Three Wise Guys (2:34)

• We Become We (2:08)

• In My Blood (2:54)

• The Nativity Song (4:04)

• Brand New Life (3:27)