‘The Chosen’ Picks Its Partner: Prime Video

The Chosen continues to break new showbiz ground, showing that success carries challenges of its own — therefore, in steps Prime Video. More on that in a bit.

The Gospels-centric drama, starring Catholic Jonathan Roumie as Jesus, continues to expand its worldwide audience while heading into its fifth season.

That included a recent takeover at New York City’s Times Square, showing off Season 5 key art, the work of legendary photographer Annie Leibovitz (who’s also a fan).

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But, the ever-growing challenges of funding, production and distribution have brought about another major change.

A New, Exclusive Streaming Home for The Chosen

As a result, The Chosen is coming exclusively to Prime Video in a deal between Amazon MGM Studios and series creator Dallas Jenkins’ 5&2 Studios.

Jenkins announced the news during a livestream on Sunday, Feb. 16, with Amazon MGM Studios head of television Vernon Sanders, and development executive Traci Blackwell.

It also landed as a press release, so, from the inbox:

Amazon MGM Studios Signs Exclusive Multi-Faceted Deal With Dallas Jenkins’ 5&2 Studios

Prime Video secures exclusive US rights to global hit series The Chosen and new unscripted series The Chosen In The Wild with Bear Grylls

Amazon MGM Studios secures theatrical distribution rights to two new releases about the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, to be part of The Chosen’s final two seasons and signs first-look deal with 5&2 Studios

Lionsgate handles global distribution for The Chosen and The Chosen In The Wild with Bear Grylls

… that’s the meat of it, with further details:

The internationally acclaimed series, The Chosen, is set to debut its Fifth Season theatrically on March 28, followed by a premiere on Prime Video in the US this June. The series will be available on Prime Video in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Sub-Saharan Africa, UK, and Latin America at a later date this year.

The Chosen gets rebranded as an Amazon Original, with the full weight of Prime Video’s marketing and PR behind it.

The Interest in Future Projects

By the way, “first-look deal” means that, in exchange for financial consideration, Amazon MGM Studios has the right of first refusal on 5&2 Studios’ future projects. And, if the studio passes on a project, Jenkins and his team then can shop it to other outlets.

Not certain how this affects projects already announced, like the limited series about Moses and the Old Testament Joseph, and The Chosen Adventures, an animated series, but Jenkins did say that he and Amazon MGM Studios were in “serious discussions” about Joseph.

But, Jenkins emphasized several times in the livestream that he and 5&2 Studios insisted on retaining creative control of the projects, and apparently, Amazon MGM agreed.

In the livestream, Jenkins said:

And so we said up front with Prime Video. We said, “Total creative control is a non-negotiable.” There cannot be any influence from any outside sources, and that ultimately falls on me. I, Dallas Jenkins, am the final say on every second that you see on any of our projects.

The Details of Distribution

As for Jenkins’ promise that the show would always be free on The Chosen App, he had this to say on the livestream.

So there’s going to be the release of the eight episodes of season five, and then 90 days it will be exclusively on Prime Video here in the States. Which means that after they release the season finale, just 90 more days, and then it will be in The Chosen App.

I hear what he’s saying, but I’m not certain if that means 90 days after the last episode’s Prime Video debut, or 90 days after the end of some other predetermined exclusivity window. I’ve sent an email to Amazon MGM Studios PR to ask, and I’ll update with the answer if I get one.

This also means that The Chosen will be disappearing from the many other streaming services where it currently appears, from Netflix to Peacock. No one has yet directly addressed whether broadcast network The CW will continue to air the show, a deal arranged by Lionsgate.

DVDs will continue to be produced, and no doubt, they’ll be for sale at Amazon.com.

And from Variety:

Additionally, Amazon MGM Studios will also now hold theatrical distribution rights to the next two installments of “The Chosen,” focused on the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, which will make up Seasons 6 and 7 (the final two seasons) of the series. Currently, Season 5 is set to be distributed in the U.S. next month by Fathom and internationally by Trafalgar Releasing.

Why Are Amazon MGM Studios and Prime Video Interested in a Faith Project?

Amazon MGM Studios already has a relationship with The Wonder Project, an independent studio created to make faith-and-values content, announced in January 2024.

From then, at TheWrap.com:

Amazon MGM Studios is teaming up with Jon Erwin and Kelly Merryman Hoogstraten’s The Wonder Project to develop series and films “rooted in spirituality” for Prime Video.

“Our goal at The Wonder Project is to tell stories that restore faith in things worth believing in, and to do this at scale,” Hoogstraten said in a statement. “We’ve been blown away by Amazon’s commitment to help us do this — both through the significant resources they are dedicating and their trust in us to tell these stories authentically to our audience.”

The independent studio, which is advised by shareholder and “The Chosen” creator Dallas Jenkins, will collaborate with the tech giant on “House of David,” which has been ordered to series and follows “the once-mighty King Saul as he falls victim to his own pride.”

The eight-episode House of David premieres Feb. 27 on Prime Video. I’ll be posting a video interview with Erwin closer to the premiere.

This is really nothing new for MGM. In its pre-Amazon days, it was known for such Christian-themed epics as Ben-Hur (silent and sound), Quo Vadis and King of Kings.

More recently, with former head Mark Burnett, it produced The Bible and A.D.: The Bible Continues for TV, and for theatrical release, Son of God, and an unfortunate remake of Ben-Hur.

What Amazon MGM Studios Had to Say

In the livestream, Jenkins talked with Sanders and Blackwell, who seem to be among the few mainstream Hollywood people to realize that ignoring the Christian audience — or just feeding it low-quality content — means leaving a lot of money on the table.

It’s a big audience, hungry for great filmmaking and storytelling, something The Chosen and other projects have demonstrated. And finally, someone appears to be listening.

Here’s some of what they had to say.

Said Blackwell:

My title is Senior Creative Executive at Amazon. And first of all, I just want to say I’m a huge, and you all know this, I’m a huge, massive fan of the show.

I was obsessed with the show before I came to Amazon. I could tell you what characters I love, what storylines I love, what my favorite scenes are. I’m a huge super fan of the show. And so I, when I came to Amazon, like Vernon brought me in, they brought me in to specifically do this and some other things.

And I want the audience to know I did not have to convince Amazon to do this. They wanted to do this programming. They knew that this audience was vastly underserved and that they wanted to obsess over these customers.

They wanted these customers on Prime Video and they wanted to give them premium elevated content, quality, faith content. And so I did not have to convince anybody to do anything.

This is the joy, the dream of my life, I have to tell you. I’m a believer, I’m a bold believer. I’m a follower of Christ. And it was great to be in a place where I didn’t have to hide that, but we just went about this goal of how can we obsess all these customers? How can we bring this quality content to Prime Video?

Sanders concurred, saying:

This has been a multi-year mission inside of Prime Video. Our leadership, this is important to our leadership, both personally and professionally.

We have seen great results when we’ve leaned into this audience. And so we knew that we needed to go out and find experts. So our first hire was Traci.

And I remembered the meeting after she started and I said, “OK, Traci, you’re at Amazon now. So the thing is, if we wanted to go big, what could we do? What’s the biggest things that we could do that you go, ‘OK, these are impossible.’?”

And honestly, the first thing that came out of her mouth was, “Have you seen The Chosen? And this thing is incredible, and I’m telling you, as big as it is, it’s about to be so much bigger, and we have to go build a relationship.”

And I was like, “OK, let’s make that happen.” So that was, I think day one, literally day one, Traci.

There’s a lot more where that came from. So, here’s the whole livestream.