Shocker! Angel Studios to release animated David this year after all, Zero A.D. bumped to next year to make room for it
Angel has acquired "the David franchise" from its original producers and will explore whether to produce new episodes of the animated prequel series too.
Forgive the sensationalistic headline, but this news really did surprise me.
Angel Studios announced yesterday that they have acquired “the David franchise” from Slingshot Productions and they are going to release the animated David movie in theatres on December 19—and they are bumping Zero A.D. to make room for it.
Zero A.D., a Nativity-themed film that was going to come out in December (six days before Christmas), will now come out sometime next year.
This is stunning for at least two major reasons:
Slingshot Productions, which had been developing David with Angel Studios since 2021, filed a lawsuit to terminate its deal with Angel last March. In August, Slingshot announced it was partnering with 5&2 Studios—whose hit show The Chosen also used to be with Angel—to find a new distributor for David. 5&2 co-founder Dallas Jenkins even played a clip from David on a Chosen-themed livestream later that month. There was no word at the time as to whether the lawsuit had been resolved—but obviously it is now. 5&2 was not mentioned in any of the reports or press releases that I saw about yesterday’s news.
Zero A.D. is directed by Alejandro Monteverde, whose Cabrini and Sound of Freedom (especially Sound of Freedom) are two of the biggest live-action hits that Angel has released. The studio also has a special ten-year five-film first-look deal with Monteverde. He’s kind of a big deal there. So it’s kind of astonishing that they would delay one of his films to make room for this one—all the more so because his film is very specific to the Christmas season, whereas David seems like a movie that could have been released at any time of year.
Anyway, here are some of the basic facts of the deal, as per an article that appeared in Deadline and a press release issued by Angel Studios itself:
Angel partnered with 2521 Entertainment to acquire “the David franchise,” which currently includes the David feature film and the Young David series.
Angel “will explore producing additional episodes of the David animated television series to extend the popular franchise.” It is not clear whether these would be released as Young David episodes or under another name.
The acquisition cost $78 million, of which $31 million came from Angel, which Deadline characterizes as the studio’s “first big move since merging with a SPAC for a public listing on the New York Stock Exchange.”
Angel also released a video of a song from the film, announcing the new release date and inviting people to pre-order their tickets (among other things, this video gives us our first good look at King Saul and his family, and it bridges the gap between Young David and the adult David that we saw in an image released last August):
A few other thoughts I have about this news, some more trivial than others:
David will now be the second animated Bible movie that Angel releases this year, following the surprise hit The King of Kings last April.
I guess this means Sam Worthington won’t be competing against himself in December. Zero A.D., which stars Worthington as Herod’s son Antipater, was set to come out on the same day as Avatar: Fire and Ash, in which Worthington plays the main character Jake Sully. And now it won’t.
You know what is coming out on December 19, aside from Avatar? The SpongeBob Movie: Search for Squarepants. So David is going up against another movie that’s aimed right at the family audience. And there’s a very good chance that Zootopia 2, which comes out three weeks earlier, will still be going strong then, too.
Zero A.D. is about the birth of Jesus, so I can’t imagine the studio releasing it at any time of year but Christmas. Would they really delay it all the way to December 2026, though? Maybe. One possible advantage if they do: Jim Caviezel plays King Herod in the film, and he’s due to play Jesus (again) in The Resurrection of the Christ, the first part of which is set to come out in March 2027. That’s just three months after Christmas 2026. Maybe Zero A.D. can ride the wave of anticipation for that film that will surely be building by then.
Bumping Zero A.D. to next year breaks the streak of major Nativity movies that had started to come out every year. (Journey to Bethlehem came out in 2023, Netflix’s Mary aka Mary Mother of Jesus came out in 2024, and Zero A.D. was going to come out in 2025… but now it won’t. Oh well.)
The legal, contractual wrangling between Slingshot and Angel Studios—and the way it ended with Angel just flat-out buying the David franchise—is giving me flashbacks to the tug-of-war between Disney and Pixar before Disney bought the studio in 2006. Except I don’t think the Slingshot people will still be calling the shots the way John Lasseter did after the Disney-Pixar merger.
I’ve been following the David franchise for four years now, and after yesterday’s news I felt a need to look back at my past coverage. Here’s a quick timeline, with a few non-David-related events included to give some of the broader context:
2021 — Angel Studios partners with Sunrise Animation Studios to crowd-fund David, much the same way Angel crowd-funded The Chosen. The film’s YouTube channel is created on September 4, Slingshot Productions is created on September 14 (as per their website), and the investment page is created no later than October 14, according to The Wayback Machine. (I first reported on the crowd-funding campaign a week and a half later, on October 24.)
June 8, 2022 — Sunrise Animation, Slingshot, and the Christian kids’ streaming service Minno announce that they are going to release a prequel series called Young David in the fall of 2023, “exclusively on Minno.” There is no mention of Angel Studios aside from the fact that Angel is involved with the feature film.
March 15, 2023 — Angel Studios, which had partnered with Fathom Events on a few theatrical releases, announces the creation of its own theatrical distribution division; one day later they announce their first theatrical release, His Only Son.
July 4, 2023 — Angel releases its second film, Sound of Freedom, and it becomes one of the biggest hits of the summer.
November 10, 2023 — Angel and Minno both release Young David episode 1.
December 8, 2023 — Angel and Minno release Young David episode 2.
January 12, 2024 — Angel and Minno release Young David episode 3.
February 9, 2024 — Angel and Minno release Young David episode 4. This is the first episode that Angel puts behind a paywall, which will apparently become a point of contention between Angel and Slingshot Productions.
March 8, 2024 — Angel and Minno release Young David episode 5.
April 10, 2024 — Angel announces at CinemaCon that David will come to theatres on November 21, 2025. Angel Studios chief marketing officer Alex Nielsen says, “We intend to release the most successful animated film of all time.”
May 28, 2024 — A year of legal wrangling between The Chosen and Angel Studios comes to an end when an arbitrator rules in The Chosen’s favour and the show is removed from the Angel Studios streaming platform.
October or November 2024 — Slingshot Productions terminates its distribution deal with Angel over multiple alleged contract breaches.
Sources disagree slightly as to when this happened: a statement that appeared on the movie’s website between February 28 and March 7 this year and stayed there until August says Slingshot terminated the deal in October 2024, while a story that appeared in The Hollywood Reporter on March 26 says they terminated the deal in November 2024.
March 3, 2025 — Mediation between Slingshot Productions and Angel Studios fails, according to the statement on the movie’s website.
March 5, 2025 — Slingshot Productions files a lawsuit against Angel Studios, according to the statement on the movie’s website.
April 11, 2025 — Angel Studios releases its first animated film, The King of Kings, which quickly becomes their 2nd-biggest hit ever, and the most successful biblical or “faith-based” film since the mid- to late 2010s.
August 6, 2025 — Dallas Jenkins’ 5&2 Studios announces it is forming a partnership with Slingshot Productions to secure and manage “all global distribution and licensing agreements” for David. The press release says the film is still aiming for a 2025 release. It makes no mention of Slingshot’s lawsuit against Angel Studios or whether the lawsuit has been resolved.
August 31, 2025 — Jenkins shows a clip from David during a Chosen-themed livestream; it begins at the 55:53 mark in the video below. At some point between August 10 and this livestream, the movie’s website is updated to remove all text except for a line that says the film is now coming out in 2026.
October 8, 2025 — Angel announces it has acquired the David franchise with 2521 Entertainment and they are going to release the film on December 19, 2025—four weeks after the release date they had announced back in April 2024.
And, I think that about covers it. More thoughts later, maybe, if any occur to me.
October 10 update: Dallas Jenkins responded to the news on social media:
Key excerpt:
Long story short, the company that has the rights to the David movie— Part of our deal included that they were trying to potentially sell to someone else, and if they were able to do that within this window of time, then they could if they wanted—if they so chose—get out of the deal that they had with us. And we found out yesterday that that’s what took place. And apparently it had been in the works for a while, because the moment it happened, it was like announcements were made and trailers were released. And so the people who have purchased the project wanted it with Angel. And so it’s with Angel.
Interesting. When 5&2 announced its deal with Slingshot last August, I wondered why they were making the announcement while the lawsuit was still unresolved. Now I wonder why they went ahead with the announcement when they knew that Slingshot was still trying to sell the movie to someone else.
November 19 update: There’s a lyric video for ‘Follow the Light’ now, too:
Upcoming Bible movies and TV shows:
now-October 29, 2025 — The Promised Land: Season 1 (streaming: YouTube)
now-November 16, 2025 — House of David: Season 2 (streaming: Prime Video - Wonder Project)
October 17, 2025 — The Chosen Adventures (streaming: Prime Video)
November 14, 2025 — The Carpenter’s Son (theatrical: Magnolia)
November 2025 — Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints: Season 2 part 1 (streaming: Fox Nation)
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)