The Trump foe behind Amazon's Biblical epic

Telegraph

2 days ago

Leonard Leo won his decades-long crusade to reshape the US legal system when he helped Donald Trump appoint three conservative Supreme Court justices, securing a Right-leaning supermajority in the nation's highest court.
While he has since fallen out of favour with the president who last week branded him a 'sleazebag', the Federalist Society leader has quietly been fighting another battle: giving pop culture a Godly makeover.
'I just said to myself well if this can work for law, why can't it work for lots of other areas of American culture and American life where things are really messed up right now,' Mr Leo said in a promotional video for Teneo, a conservative networking hub he helped fund.
He went on: 'Entertainment that's really corrupting our youth – why can't we build talent pipelines and networks that can positively affect those areas as well?'
So far, the Christian power player's campaign to litter the streaming charts with conservative programming is another success story.
Mr Leo, 59, secretly helped bankroll the studio behind House of David, a biblical retelling of David and Goliath, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Like the story of its protagonist, it defied the odds by leaping to the coveted number one spot on Amazon Prime. It has already been commissioned for a second season.
Mr Leo, who joined the Federalist Society as a student in the 1980s, reportedly has not spoken to Mr Trump in five years, but as his scope for influencing the president dwindled, he began yielding another power playing tool.
In 2020 Barre Seid, the Chicago billionaire, donated all of his shares in his electrical manufacturing firm Tripp Lite to one of Mr Leo's conservative non-profits. It was then sold for $1.6 billion.
This funding allowed him to plough millions of dollars into amplifying religious and conservative filmmakers, the newspaper reported.
Mr Leo is said to have helped fund Wonder Project, a Texas-based studio founded by Jon Erwin, the Christian director, which created House of David. The studio's tagline is: 'Restoring faith in things worth believing in.'
In an Instagram post announcing it had achieved number one on the Amazon Prime chart, Wonder Project said 'all glory to God for this one'.
Mr Erwin is a member of Teneo which has a subgroup focused on entertainment.
Its annual conference is understood to have become a nerve centre for Christian filmmakers where creatives pitch to conservative investors.
The network is understood to invest in studios rather than individual movies to achieve an ongoing impact on culture, rather than producing one-hit wonders.
Wonder Project has received funding from Sovereign Capital, a Christian investment firm. John Coleman, its leader, said its objective is 'to love God and love our neighbour through investing'.
Mr Leo has also reportedly given money into Sycamore Studios, which focuses on children's entertainment free of views of diversity, gender or homosexuality.
'We're not going to be the Ford Foundation to be around forever,' Mr Leo told the Wall Street Journal. 'The goal is to do our work, and at some point in time to decide that we've done what we can do and move on.'
The success of House of David, which more than 22 million people streamed in the first two weeks, comes amid a surge in appetite for Christian films – one of which Mr Erwin has helped spearhead.
He was the mastermind behind Jesus Revolution, a 2023 film which is based on the true story of the early days of the 'Jesus People' hippie subculture in the 1960s. It left out that the protagonist, Lonnie Frisbee, who really did kickstart the Jesus movement, was gay and died of Aids in 1993, after he was excommunicated and outcast from the movement he had founded.
It made more than $50 million at the box office and when it was released it was the highest-grossing film released by the Lionsgate studio since 2019.
It was the 48th highest grossing film in the US in 2023.
Mr Erwin's previous works include October Baby, about young mothers finding God in an abortion clinic, and Woodland, which features young mothers finding God on an equalities march.
'Within the entertainment industry specifically, I think there's an uprising on the behalf of Christianity,' Mr Erwin previously told Christianity Today. 'I think there's a resurgence in belief and a sudden increase in spirituality in America, even though church attendance is going down. It's an exciting moment to be in the business. We're at the forefront of a return to God.'
He added: 'We've only scratched the surface on what faith-based entertainment can be. We're wondering, 'How can we make the Bible a cinematic universe?''
Key players continue to make inroads. In April, Angel Studios released King of Kings, an animated film in which Charles Dickens, voiced by Kenneth Brannagh, tells the story of Jesus to his son Walter, played by Roman Griffin Davis.
The film made over $60 million at the box office and is number 11 of the highest grossing films so far this year in the US, according to IMDB.
Angel Studios also helped launch Biblical drama The Chosen, a series about Jesus's life. When the fifth season was released this year, they put out a three-part cinematic release. All three are in the top 50 highest-grossing box office releases so far this year, bringing in more than $43 million collectively.
Mr Erwin's next directing project with Angel Studios, is Young Washington, a film about the origins of America's first president.
Trump attacks Leo
When it comes to the origins of Mr Trump's initial electoral success, Mr Leo was certainly a player.
During the 2016 election campaign he gave Mr Trump a list of potential justices he could appoint to win over support from the Republican base.
He advised Mr Trump on the nominations of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
But last week, Mr Trump, who reportedly believes Mr Leo took too much credit for the judicial appointments, went from simply banishing Mr Leo to his close confidantes to publicly attacking him.
'I was new to Washington, and it was suggested that I use The Federalist Society as a recommending source on judges,' Mr Trump wrote on Truth Social after a US court blocked the majority of his tariffs.
'I did so, openly and freely, but then realised that they were under the thumb of a real 'sleazebag' named Leonard Leo, a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America, and obviously has his own separate ambitions.'
Responding to the jibe, Mr Leo praised Mr Trump 'transforming' the federal courts, which he said amounted to Mr Trump's 'most important legacy'.
As Mr Leo moves on from Maga and begins to flex his soft power in the entertainment industry, it is clear Mr Trump was just one episode in his multi-part series on his own crusade to reshape America in his conservative, Christian vision.