Newsbites: Scorsese's Saints! Animated David! Ruth & Boaz!
Season 2 of Scorsese's series features the life and death of St Peter; a new clip from David makes a small tweak to the biblical story; and Ruth & Boaz clings to the Netflix top ten in two countries.
St Peter featured in new trailer for Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints
Get ready for a second helping of Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints. Season 2 of the series is coming soon—and, like Season 1, it is being released in two parts.
The first part will span the entire history of the Catholic church, from the apostle Peter in the 1st century to Carlo Acutis in the 21st. (The latter saint died in 2006 and was officially canonized just last month.) It’s set to premiere November 16, and you can watch a trailer for it here:
According to Fox News, the first part of Season 2 will cover these four saints, in this order:
November 16 — St Patrick — 5th century
November 23 — St Peter — 1st century
presumably November 30 — St Thomas Becket — c. 1119-1170
presumably December 7 — St Carlo Acutis — 1991-2006
The second part is set to come out next spring, and it will take place mostly in the first century, as it is set to feature the Virgin Mary, St Paul, and St Longinus (the traditional name of the soldier who pierced Jesus’ side). It will also feature St Lucia, who was martyred during the persecution under Diocletian in AD 304.
Previous videos for Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints:
The Season 1 Part 1 teaser (November 2, 2024)
The Season 1 Part 2 trailer and a behind-the-scenes video (April 10, 2025)
David picks a stone from a stream in a new clip from David
Another week, another sneak peek from the upcoming animated David movie.
This week’s clip is the briefest one yet—48 seconds before the title card kicks in—and it’s actually one we’ve seen before, sort of.
It shows David picking a stone from a stream before he walks up a hill and looks at an army in the distance, and it’s basically a slightly shorter version of the one-minute clip that The Chosen creator Dallas Jenkins shared during a livestream two months ago, during that brief period when the film was being promoted by 5&2 Studios.
You can watch the clip here:
A few quick thoughts:
Assuming that the stone seen here is the one David will use to kill Goliath, it bears mentioning that the biblical David “chose five smooth stones from the stream”, not just one (I Samuel 17:40).
That might seem like a minor nit-pick, but there’s actually a thematic point to be made here. As Dan Kent has argued, the fact that David chose five stones is a “tell” in the biblical story that shows us David was exercising his own “skills and abilities” when he fought the giant. He had experience slinging stones; he knew what sort of stones to look for; he knew what his hit-to-miss ratio was likely to be. There was no divine intervention in the biblical version of the story; there was simply David’s willingness to put his skills to the service of defending God’s good name.1
In the film, on the other hand, there does seem to be divine intervention, of a sort: note how David picks the stone after a butterfly draws his attention to it. The butterfly seems to be functioning as a good omen of sorts, as a sign from God that David must follow.2 It gives the stone a sense of destiny—and that sense would be diluted if David hedged his bets by taking more than one.
So this change to the story, however minor it might be, reflects a particular theological interpretation of the story. The film adds a hint of divine guidance to the stone selection that is not there in the text—and it underlines David’s faith in that guidance by having him pick just the one stone, not five.
David comes to theatres December 19.
Previous videos for David:
The demo video (October 24, 2021)
A one-minute clip (August 31, 2025; starts at the 55:53 mark)
The ‘Follow the Light’ clip (October 9, 2025)
The pay-it-forward announcement with new footage (October 15, 2025)
The ‘Samuel’s Blessing’ clip (October 16, 2025)
The teaser and the ‘Tapestry’ clip (October 23, 2025)
The ‘Why God - My God’ clip (October 24, 2025)
Plus see my posts on the Young David series: episodes one, two, three, four, five.
Ruth & Boaz clings to the Netflix top ten in two countries
Ruth & Boaz may have fallen off the Netflix global top ten last week, but it still made the list in two countries this week.
The film—a modernization of the book of Ruth produced by Tyler Perry and DeVon Franklin—was #9 in Jamaica and #10 in South Africa during the week of October 20-26, which was its fifth week on the platform.
Netflix has not released an official view count for the film since it fell off the global list. In its first three weeks, it got 28.5 million views worldwide.
Upcoming Bible movies and TV shows:
now-November 16, 2025 — House of David: Season 2 (streaming: Prime Video - Wonder Project)
November 14, 2025 — The Carpenter’s Son (theatrical: Magnolia)
November 16-December 7, 2025 — Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints: Season 2 part 1 (streaming: Fox Nation; St Peter episode November 23, 2025)
December 19, 2025 — David (theatrical: Angel Studios)
March 22-April 5, 2026 — The Faithful (television: Fox)
April-May 2026 — Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints: Season 2 part 2 (streaming: Fox Nation)
second half of 2026 — The Chosen: Season 6: Episodes 1-6 (streaming: Prime Video)
sometime in 2026 — Zero A.D. (theatrical: Angel Studios)
March 12, 2027 — The Chosen: Season 6: Finale (theatrical: Amazon MGM)
March 26, 2027 — The Resurrection of the Christ: Part One (theatrical: Lionsgate)
May 6, 2027 — The Resurrection of the Christ: Part Two (theatrical: Lionsgate)
March 31, 2028 — The Chosen: Season 7: Premiere (theatrical: Amazon MGM)
no release date specified — Jacob (theatrical: Angel Studios)
no release date specified — Joseph of Egypt (streaming: Prime Video)
who knows when Malick will finish it — The Way of the Wind (theatrical)
A few key quotes from Kent’s post on this subject:
This fact, that [David] picked up 5 stones, is a “tell” in the story. . . .
David’s faith did play a key role in the story, which I will discuss below. But I now think the story tells us something completely different, and more enlightening: God did not intervene. David was able to defeat Goliath because David had the right training, experience, and knowledge. It was David’s skills and abilities, which he learned on his own, that gave him the unexpected advantage over his enemy. . . .
Traditionally the story is told that David defeated Goliath because of his great faith, and that everyone else in the story did not have a faith strong enough to do so. But I would argue that the story is more about David’s faithfulness than his faith. It seems to me that David challenged Goliath because of his faithfulness, then ultimately defeated him because of his skill. That is, it was David’s faithfulness that prompted him to fight Goliath to begin with, but it was his skill that brought him victory.
Kent also explores how David’s faithfulness is demonstrated by the fact that, unlike Saul or Eliab or Goliath, David did not react by asking how the situation reflected on him, but by asking how it reflected on God. Everything he did was for God’s glory, not his own.
Butterflies performed a similar function in Kings, the 2009 series that modernized the story of David and Saul: in that series, the “anointing” of Saul and David is represented by monarch butterflies that land on their heads in the form of a crown. A butterfly is also featured on the flag of Saul’s kingdom, which is called Gilboa in that series.
