Video updates: The Chosen returns! Jesus does ASL! Moses is funny! and more!
Video updates: The Chosen returns! Jesus does ASL! Moses is funny! and more!
Trailers, clips, and pilot episodes for current and upcoming movies and TV shows about Jesus, Moses, and Paul.
The Chosen Season 4 starts streaming this Sunday
Four months after it launched in theatres, The Chosen Season 4 is finally ready to start streaming. Dallas Jenkins made the announcement in a video on Wednesday:
The first episode will make its streaming debut tomorrow night, and the rest of the season will come out Sundays and Thursdays until June 27 (Sunday nights at 4pm PST / 7pm EST and Thursday nights at 5:30pm PST / 8:30pm EST).
The first episode has its own brand-new trailer, here:
And the episode itself will be livestreamed here:
All previous episodes of The Chosen have either gone straight to streaming or have come out online within a few weeks of their theatrical releases. The Season 4 streaming release was delayed for a few months because of a legal dispute between The Chosen Inc. and Angel Studios, the show’s original distributor.
In a nutshell, The Chosen Inc. sought to terminate its contract with Angel early last year, shortly after the Season 3 finale came out, but it wasn’t until this week that an arbitrator finally settled the matter in The Chosen Inc.’s favour.
As a result of the decision, the first three seasons are no longer available on the Angel Studios app. Angel, which helped get the show off the ground by organizing its first crowd-funding campaign back in 2018, responded to the loss of the series by saying it planned to appeal the decision, and by posting a 25-minute tribute to the fans who contributed to the show financially during its first four seasons, whether by investing in the series or by contributing to the show’s pay-it-forward program:
Season 4 will stream exclusively on The Chosen’s app for now. Presumably, at some point down the road it will join the first three seasons in getting sublicensed to other streaming platforms like Netflix (where the show is a big hit) and Prime Video.
Jesus: a Deaf Missions film releases a short clip
I’ve mentioned before that Jesus: a Deaf Missions film—a dramatization of the gospels in which all of the dialogue is rendered in American Sign Language—is coming to American theatres June 20. We now have a very brief (22 seconds!) clip from that film, in which Jesus recites one of the most famous Bible verses ever:
Deaf Missions has also released a video of the film’s director, Joseph Josselyn, talking about his background and his reasons for making this film:
Among other things, I learn from this video that Deaf Missions produced a short film based on the Sermon on the Mount way back in 1975. You can download it here.
The Promised Land — “the Exodus meets The Office”?
Slavery. Plagues. Drowning the Egyptians. Battling the Amalekites. Trembling before God at Mount Sinai. Punishing the Hebrews for worshiping a golden calf.
Pretty serious stuff. But for Mitch Hudson, an assistant director on The Chosen and The Shift, the story of Moses is fodder for a comedy series called The Promised Land, which a recent promotional e-mail describes as “the Exodus meets The Office.”
The cast features such Bible-movie (or Bible-adjacent-movie) veterans as:
Wasim No’mani as Moses — Yanni in The Chosen (2021-present); he also played “Jesus” in The Autopsy of Jesus Christ (2016), which is set in the present day
Shereen Khan as Miriam — Herodias in The Chosen (2024-present)
Majed Sayess as Aaron — Jabez in The Chosen (2024-present)
Tucker Smallwood as Jethro — Committee Member in Evan Almighty (2007)
Only one episode has been shot so far, but it’s going to premiere July 1 on YouTube. If it finds an audience, there may be more episodes down the road.
In the meantime, you can watch some behind-the-scenes videos on the show’s official YouTube channel. Among other things, we learn:
One of the characters is an Egyptian soldier named Chisisi (Dav Coretti) who survived the Red Sea, ended up on the wrong side of the water, and is now living—albeit incognito—with the Hebrews… one of whom, Korah (Brad Culver), is apparently threatening to expose him.
Biblical stories depicted or alluded to in this episode will apparently include: the song of Miriam (Exodus 15:20-21), the gathering of the quail (Exodus 16:13), Moses getting water from the rock (Exodus 17:1-7), and Aaron and Hur raising Moses’ arms during the battle with the Amalekites (Exodus 17:10-13).
Here’s the most recent video, which was posted on June 5, 2023:
And here is the episode’s “sizzle reel”:
Paul: The Last Apostle pilot episode available for rent
Ready for yet another indie Bible series? One that caught my eye recently is Paul: The Last Apostle, which is being produced by the Hispanic ministry En Su Mision.
Like The Promised Land, this series appears to consist of just one episode so far—and in this case, you can already rent it, in English and in Spanish. The show also has a trailer with some footage that isn’t in the episode, but it appears this footage may have been filmed just for the trailer, as sort of a “proof of concept” for the series.
In any case, you can watch the trailer here:
The pilot episode, which came out last year, covers Paul’s experiences in Thessalonica and Berea, starting with the mob that dragged Paul’s friend Jason out of his house (Acts 17:5-14); it also has a side story about Aquila and Priscilla being expelled from Rome, along with the other Jews that lived in that city (Acts 18:2).
The episode also features a scene in which Paul preaches on topics and themes that don’t actually come up in the biblical Paul’s writings, like the virgin birth and the prophecies it fulfilled.1 The impression one gets is that this series is less interested in exploring Paul as a compelling dramatic character in a historically accurate way, and more interested in using him to deliver a series of generic Christian messages.
Notably, the pilot was directed by a woman, Ruthie Grumbine. While female directors are becoming more prominent in other parts of the industry, it’s still pretty rare to find one who has made a Bible film. Off the top of my head, the only other woman I can think of who has directed a regular live-action Bible movie since the silent era is The Nativity Story’s Catherine Hardwicke, and that was 18 years ago.2
Anyway. The producers are currently casting major roles like Barnabas and Stephen, and they’re planning to shoot the rest of the series in the fall. Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, I have a question about House of David…
Incidentally, what’s the current status of that House of David series at Prime Video?
The series, which will be based on the story of Saul and David, was announced back in January—on the same day The Chosen Season 4 had its world premiere, as it happens—and I have heard from multiple sources, including one or two that would be in a position to know, that the producers were looking at a possible start date in May.
Well, it’s June now. Has the series started filming yet, or is it still in pre-production?
Note: The section on Paul: The Last Apostle has been significantly rewritten to take into account some facts about the show that I learned after writing the first version of this post.
The Paul of this episode even argues that the gifts of the Magi fulfilled certain Old Testament prophecies, which is certainly a theme that many Christians have explored over the years, but the Bible itself never makes that connection.
Also worth noting: Kasi Lemmons wrote and directed 2013’s Black Nativity, but the bulk of that film is set in the present day, and the Nativity itself takes place in a dream sequence that essentially transposes the biblical story to a modern setting.
Prior to this century, only two Bible films come to mind that were (co-)directed by women: 1906’s La vie du Christ aka The Birth, the Life and the Death of Christ, which was directed by Alice Guy-Blaché; and 1998’s The Prince of Egypt, which had three directors, one of whom was Brenda Chapman (the first woman to co-direct a major-studio animated film).
Women have also been active as Bible-movie producers: Eunice Kennedy Shriver produced 1999’s Mary, Mother of Jesus with her son Robert, and Roma Downey produced 2013’s The Bible and its various spin-offs with her husband Mark Burnett.