Director Dallas Jenkins said God used the “biggest disappointment” of his career to lead to what has now become the award-winning multiseason streaming series based on the life of Jesus, The Chosen.
While speaking with Fox News Tonight, Jenkins recounted how the show began.
“I was home alone with my wife after the biggest disappointment of my career. The movie that I’d made that had gotten Hollywood attention, distributed all over the country in theaters, completely bombed,” Jenkins said. “I went in just a couple hours from being a director with a bright future to a director with no future.”
Jenkins explained how a series of faith-building circumstances would lead to the eventual creation of The Chosen.
“My wife felt like God was just laying it extremely powerfully on her heart — almost as clear as though it was an audible voice — to read the story of the feeding of the 5,000,” he said. “We had this phrase in our heads, too: impossible math.”
“So, we are trying to figure all this out and what this has to do with a box office failure,” Jenkins continued. “A random person that I’ve never met Facebook messaged me, and all he said was, ‘Remember it’s not your job to feed the 5,000. It’s only to provide the loaves and fish.’”
Jenkins said he then knew his job was not to worry about the results or “to have some big success” but “to make the best loaves and fish that I could. If God deemed them worthy of acceptance — that was it.”
He then explained he went on to make a short film for his church about the life of Jesus that would lead to co-writing and directing The Chosen.
The streaming series bucked Hollywood trends when it raised upward of $10.2 million with more than 16,000 investors through crowdfunding in 2018 to fund the production of the original season.
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The Chosen, which is a crowdfunded series distributed by Angel Studios, is now in its third season.
In November, the third season’s premiere soared to the No. 3 box office spot, attracting a historic number of fans and grossing $8.7 million domestically in its opening weekend.