Trailer round-up: Promised Land! House of David! Carpenter's Son!
From Office-style sitcom humour to epic action and creepy R-rated horror, there's a Bible movie or TV show for everyone this fall...
I was out of town for three days, on a short camping trip with my son’s Grade 12 class, and lo and behold, three new Bible-movie or -streaming-show trailers came out in that time—all of which happen to be in very different genres (sitcom, action epic, horror). Here they are, in release-date order:
October 1 — The Promised Land: Season 1
A few quick notes:
The trailer begins with Moses giving the Israelites the message that God told him to give them in Exodus 19:4: “You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings…” A man in the crowd objects, “I don’t remember any eagles!” Very reminiscent of the point-missing literalism of the people who heard Brian’s parables in Monty Python’s Life of Brian.
Aaron, who is better at public speaking than Moses (cf Exodus 4:13-16), tries to rouse the crowd: “When I say ‘Promised’, you say ‘Land’!”
Moses’ face is glowing when he comes back down the mountain with two stone tablets; he also wears a veil while announcing that he has “the renewed covenant and the new laws for us to follow” (Exodus 34:29-35).
Other things we see include: the divine storm cloud coming down over Mount Sinai (Exodus 19:16), Moses smashing a golden object (Exodus 32:20), Aaron’s staff budding (Numbers 17), Moses and some other Israelites building the Tabernacle (Exodus 36:8-38:31), Aaron putting on the priestly robes (Leviticus 8:1-9), and a pillar of cloud coming down onto the Tabernacle (Exodus 40:34-35).
The pilot episode has been out on YouTube since July 2024. The next five episodes will also come out on YouTube every Wednesday next month, October 1-29.
I hope to write about the series as it unfolds, time permitting. (There are no school trips planned for October, but you never know what else will come up.) In the meantime, you can check out my detailed scene-by-scene analysis of the pilot episode, as well as my interview last year with series creator Mitch Hudson.
Previous videos for The Promised Land:
The ‘Behind the Scenes: Day 5’ and ‘Sizzle Reel’ videos (June 1, 2024)
The pilot trailer and the ‘Get to Know Moses’ and ‘Who is Moses? Mitch Hudson Explains’ videos (June 22, 2024)
The post-pilot livestream video (July 12, 2024)
The post-announcement Q&A (August 15, 2024)
The Portuguese-subtitled pilot episode (September 18, 2024)
The first podcast episode (July 26, 2025)
The sneak peek of the first-look trailer (August 22, 2025)
The first-look trailer (September 3, 2025)
Links to more posts about this series here.
October 5 — House of David: Season 2
It’s hard to pinpoint specific moments from the Bible in this trailer, as it all seems pretty general—fighting, romance, political intrigue, etc. The trailer does hint at a few non-biblical story elements, though. So, a few quick notes:
It looks like this season will follow up on that curious plot twist at the end of Season 1, in which Eshbaal took the throne while his father and brother were out on the battlefield. There is absolutely nothing like this in the Bible; Eshbaal isn’t even mentioned in the Bible until after his father and brothers die in battle and he inherits the throne by default (II Samuel 2:8). The biblical Eshbaal then engaged in a two-year civil war against David and the tribe of Judah (II Samuel 2:10, 3:1), so it certainly makes sense to portray him as one of David’s opponents. But to portray him as scheming against his own father and/or brother? Seems like an unnecessary complication to me when there is so much other narrative material to get through, but I guess we’ll see where this is all going soon enough.
Someone, presumably Jonathan, says in voice-over, presumably to David: “Those men would follow you into the fires of hell.” Did the Israelites even have a concept of hellfire at this point in history?1
Saul meets Samuel again—more than once, from the look of it (unless one of these scenes is a flashback)—and on one of these occasions, Samuel is held in place by Saul’s soldiers. There is no meeting like this in the Bible. The Bible states explicitly that Samuel never went to see Saul again after God rejected Saul (I Samuel 15:35), which happened at the very beginning of this series; and the one time we know of that Saul tried to see Samuel again, Saul and his men were overwhelmed by the Spirit of God, and Saul in particular took off his clothes and spent a whole day lying naked on the ground (I Samuel 19:18-24). So Saul and his men were all basically incapacitated, even humiliated, by a supernatural force that protected Samuel. There is no record anywhere of Saul and Samuel having an actual conversation again before Samuel died—much less one in which Samuel was restrained by Saul’s soldiers while Saul confronted him.
There are two details in the trailer that might reflect certain biblical elements:
We see a wide shot of the Tabernacle at one point, which suggests to me that this season might get into the story about Doeg (introduced in Season 1) killing the priests of Nob and their families, as per I Samuel 22:6-23.
I’m still assuming that the bag in David’s hand is filled with Philistine foreskins—and I assume a lot of the violence we see in this trailer comes from the raid in which David and his men acquire those foreskins (I Samuel 18:24-27).
Season 1 came out on regular Prime Video, but Season 2 will only be available (at first) through Wonder Project, a brand new streaming channel that will only be available via Prime Video in the US. The season launches with a two-episode premiere October 5 and new episodes will come out weekly until November 16. The season will then become available on regular Prime Video, globally, “at a later date”.
Links to more posts about this series here.
Fall 2025 — The Carpenter’s Son
Okay, this isn’t really a trailer, per se. It’s another 20-seconds-plus teaser that hints at the biblical and horror elements in this film, which is reportedly inspired by the Infancy Gospel of Thomas—an apocryphal 2nd-century document in which the young Jesus terrorizes his neighbours with his supernatural powers.
The teaser begins with The Carpenter (i.e. Joseph) saying, in voice-over, “Pray. Find the strength to bear against Satan.” And the rest of the teaser seems to show Satan preying upon The Boy (i.e. Jesus) somehow.
That’s interesting, because Satan isn’t part of the Infancy Gospel at all—so if Jesus’ neighbours are terrorized in this film, will it still be Jesus who’s doing the terrorizing, possibly under Satan’s influence? Or will Jesus be blamed for things that Satan does, à la the opening scene in 2016’s The Young Messiah (a faith-based film that also took story elements from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas)? As ever, we shall see.
This film was recently rated R “for strong/bloody violent content, and brief nudity.” It still doesn’t have a North American release date, beyond a vague “Fall 2025 AD”, but the IMDb says it’s opening in Mexico and Argentina October 30, so… we’ll see.
Previous videos for The Carpenter’s Son:
The first 20-second teaser (August 27, 2025)
Links to more posts about this movie here.
Upcoming Bible movies and TV shows:
September 26, 2025 — Ruth & Boaz (streaming: Netflix)
September 28, 2025 — The Chosen: Season 5 (streaming: The Chosen app)
October 1, 2025 — The Promised Land: Season 1 (streaming: YouTube)
October 5, 2025 — House of David: Season 2 (streaming: Prime Video - Wonder Project)
October 17, 2025 — The Chosen Adventures (streaming: Prime Video)
Fall 2025 — The Carpenter’s Son (theatrical: Magnolia)
November 2025 — Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints: Season 2 part 1 (streaming: Fox Nation)
December 19, 2025 — Zero A.D. (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)
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 — David (theatrical)
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)
See, e.g., the list of Jewish traditions about the afterlife here.
In David’s day, the dominant view seems to have been that, to the extent that there was any afterlife at all, the souls of the dead went to a shadowy realm known as Sheol, similar to the Greek concept of Hades. The idea that some people might be punished by fire really sets in with the concept of “Gehinnom”, or “Gehenna”, which was named after the Valley of Hinnom outside of Jerusalem, where children were sacrificed in fiery pagan rituals (II Kings 23:10)—but Jerusalem hadn’t become an Israelite city yet when Saul was king.
It is sometimes argued that a verse in Deuteronomy indicates there is fire in Sheol, but the verse in question describes how the fire kindled by God’s wrath will “devour the earth” and destroy all its harvests and mountains (Deuteronomy 32:22)—so the fact that the fire in question will also “burn down to the lowest Sheol” simply tells us how all-consuming the fire is; it doesn’t tell us anything about the natural regular state of Sheol itself.
For what it’s worth, there is a hint of hellfire in Season 1 of this series, when the fallen angels fall a second time during the giants’ origin story—but it seems to me that the fire we see does not belong to a place but, rather, comes from the bodies of the angels themselves. Either way, one could argue that hellfire is part of the universe of this series already.