Faith & Family News: 'Chosen' S5; Wonder Project Has 'David' & More

In this month's faith & family media news, The Chosen prepares to launch Season 5 in theaters and on its new, exclusive streaming service; and the Wonder Project drops House of David on Prime Video and has announced other projects.

Prime Video Is The Chosen Streaming Partner

The megahit Gospels-based series The Chosen -- formerly available on its own app and on multiple online sites -- has finally landed on its one and only ... streaming service, that is.

The winner of the Biblical sweepstakes is Amazon's Prime Video, available to anyone who has an Amazon Prime subscription -- which is about 200 million people worldwide. It's also the corporate sibling of Amazon MGM Studios, producer of Prime Video's big-budget The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

In a Feb. 16 livestream, series creator Dallas Jenkins appeared with Vernon Sanders, head of TV for Amazon MGM, and Traci Blackwell, a development executive for the studio, part of whose mission is to target the chronically underserved Christian audience.

Amazon MGM has struck a deal with Jenkins' 5&2 Studios (the new name for the company that produces The Chosen). Through it, Prime Video gets the exclusive U.S. streaming rights to The Chosen and its upcoming unscripted spin-off, The Chosen in the Wild With Bear Grylls.

In addition, Amazon MGM Studios acquired the theatrical-distribution rights to Seasons 6 and 7 of The Chosen, which focus on the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, along with a deal to get first dibs on future 5&2 Studios productions.

(Lionsgate, a current partner of The Chosen, will distribute the two series outside of the U.S.)

This doesn't affect the upcoming theatrical release of Season 5, subtitled The Last Supper, which comes to big screens in three parts, on March 28, April 4, and April 11.

After this, S5 is expected to land on Prime Video as an Amazon Original in June. Then, after a 90-day window, it comes to The Chosen App, where Jenkins has pledged it will always be available for free.

Fans also need not fear that Amazon MGM Studios will meddle with The Chosen as it has with Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

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.

Blackwell reported that her bosses were eager to woo the Christian audience, saying:

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?

Click here for a long post at my Pax Culturati blog at Patheos.com for more details, and below find the recently released S5 trailer:

World of Wonder: House of David

Last week, the eight-hour, seven-episode House of David dropped on Prime Video with its first three hours.

Based on the Books of Samuel, it's the first product of the creative partnership between Amazon MGM Studios and the Wonder Project, an independent studio co-founded by Jon Erwin (of the filmmaking Erwin Brothers of Lionsgate’s Kingdom Story Company).

Although he’s not directly involved in this production, The Chosen creator Dallas Jenkins is both an investor and an advisor to the Wonder Project.

Shot in Greece and Calgary, Canada, House of David is handsomely produced, with impressive special effects. Like The Chosen, it takes a Biblical narrative and spins it out, retaining the basic spine of the story and expanding on it with additional characters and plotlines.

House of David also weaves in elements from extra-Biblical traditions and legends, including ones about the parentages of David and the giant Goliath (and as you can see from the trailer below, he is a proper giant).

I recently did a video interview with Jon Erwin, the series' co-creator (with writer/director Jon Gunn, who's also Wonder Project's Head of Story). There's a quote and my further thoughts on the project at Pax Culturati, but here's the whole video interview:

In Other Wonder Project News

Country star and actress Reba McEntire, star of NBC's sitcom Happy's Place, will produce and star in a film adaptation of Fannie Flagg's bestselling novel The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion.

Flagg has written nearly a dozen novels, including 1987’s Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café. She also co-wrote the film adaptation, called Fried Green Tomatoes.

From Deadline:

Published in November 2013, The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion tells the story of Mrs. Sookie Poole of Point Clear, Alabama, who has just married off her daughter and is looking forward to relaxing. The only thing left to contend with is her domineering mother, the formidable 90-year-old Lenore Simmons Krackenberry, who is obsessed with family lineage and Southern heritage.

But when Sookie receives a series of mysterious letters that suggest that she’s adopted, she gets sent down a rabbit hole of self-discovery, ultimately uncovering the swashbuckling story of Fritzi Jurdabralinski and her sisters, a daring group of women who ran the first All Girl Filling Station during WWII and ultimately became the first female Air Force pilots.

Academy Award-winner Callie Khouri (Thelma & Louse) will direct from a script by Tony Award-winning playwright and screenwriter Bekah Brunstetter.

The film is in early stages of development, so no premiere date or further casting has been announced.

Amazon MGM Studios has also given a cast-contingent series order to the drama It's Not Like That, following a newly divorced woman who meets a widowed minister with three kids.

And, Gunn is set to direct Flyer, a biopic of the Wright Brothers, following them to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, as they attempt to get a flying machine off the ground. Scripting the film are TV-news journalist James Stolz, and Peter Doyle.

Bonus News:

On April 11, Angel Studios releases The King of Kings in theaters, based on a Jesus-themed short story written by Charles Dickens, and not published until after his death.

The animated film features the voices of Kenneth Branagh, Uma Thurman, Pierce Brosnan, Mark Hamill, Roman Griffin Davis, Forest Whitaker, Ben Kingsley, and Oscar Isaac.

Click here for info.

Image: The Chosen

Kate O’Hare, a longtime entertainment journalist, is Social Media Content Manager and Blog Editor at Family Theater Productions.