Jesus Christ, superstar: how the Messiah became TV and box-office gold

The Guardian

10-04-2025

If you're looking for your own personal Jesus this Easter, you've never had it so good. Faith‑based entertainment is booming like never before, offering up myriad new screen Messiahs and resurrecting a few old ones. But if there's a Christ for our times, it is surely Jonathan Roumie, the Irish-Arab-American star of the smash-hit biblical TV series The Chosen.
Nine years ago, Roumie was just another struggling actor in Los Angeles, desperately seeking his big break. He was also a practising Catholic. One morning, as Roumie tells it, he prayed for divine intervention: 'I literally said: 'God, you take this from me. It's in your hands now. It's not up to me.'' Three months later, he was cast as Jesus in The Chosen, a series seeking to retell the story of Christ as a bingeable long‑form drama, rather than the usual earnest myth‑making – with high production values, down-to-earth characters, historical context and a seven-season arc that's not afraid to embellish scripture.
The first season of The Chosen was shot in 2018 in Texas (doubling for Capernaum, on the Sea of Galilee in what is now Israel, in AD26), on a reported budget of $10m (£7.8m); the current, fifth season, Last Supper, had a reported budget of $48m and is being released in three parts in cinemas worldwide over Easter. (Parts one and two premiered in the US on 28 March and are released in the UK on 10 April.) After that, they're streaming on Amazon and, for free, on The Chosen's own app. The show claims to have reached 280 million viewers worldwide and has been translated into a record 50 languages.
'It's the most famous and successful story in history, so I definitely can't take credit for that,' says Dallas Jenkins, the 49-year-old creator of The Chosen, who co-writes and directs every episode. 'But perhaps we've done a good job of reminding the viewer, practising Christian or not, of the humanity and relevance of it.' Jenkins, a faith-based film-maker (his father, Jerry B Jenkins, is the author of the bestselling series of Christian novels Left Behind), first cast Roumie as Jesus in a low-budget short film 10 years ago. 'I saw what everyone else is seeing,' he says. 'Whereas most previous depictions were either hippy Jesus or formal 'halo around his head' Jesus, Jonathan can pull off the piety and authority while also pulling off the humour and intimacy.' Season six, the crucifixion story, will be 'huge', he promises. 'And our finale will be a big global theatrical event.' There are also Chosen spin-offs in the works, including an animated children's series, a Joseph miniseries and The Chosen in the Wild, a reality series with the adventurer Bear Grylls.
The show has made Roumie a global superstar. He has visited the Vatican (and took a selfie with Pope Francis) and is a regular speaker at stadium-sized Christian gatherings, such as those hosted by the National Eucharistic Congress and the evangelical Liberty University, where VIP groups pay for individual audiences with him. One woman even asked him to heal her son, a wheelchair user (Roumie told her he didn't have that gift, but he prayed with her). Roumie also gave a 15-minute speech at the anti-abortion March for Life rally in Washington in 2023, alongside various Republican politicians, but said of the event: 'That wasn't politics, that was spirituality.'
But the two are increasingly difficult to separate in today's US, where Christian leaders have fully supported Donald Trump and his Make America Great Again (Maga) agenda. Despite the decidedly non-Christian aspects of Trump's personality, many on the religious right see him as a 'vehicle' for delivering reforms such as the overturning of abortion rights, just as Republicans have viewed the church as a vehicle for influencing otherwise apolitical voters.
Beyond The Chosen, those seeking a more intimate engagement with Roumie's messianic aura have another route: Hallow, which bills itself as 'the #1 prayer app'. Launched in 2018, Hallow delivers prayers, Bible stories, meditations, music and other Catholic content; it has had over 18m downloads, it says. Part of the reason for its popularity is its many endorsements, from celebrities including the actors Mark Wahlberg (who has a 'significant stake' in the company and fronted a Super Bowl ad for it last year) and Chris Pratt, the singers Andrea Bocelli and Gwen Stefani, Russell Brand and Grylls.
Above all others, though, Roumie has been the face of Hallow, and the voice. He has appeared in its ads and narrates much of its content, including its Lent Pray40 challenge, which encourages followers to pray with the app every day of Lent. Despite his claims of political neutrality, Roumie has promoted Hallow on Fox News many times and in March he did a 90-minute YouTube interview with Tucker Carlson, the former Fox host, vocal Trump supporter and as divisive a rightwing figure as they come. Hallow's co-founder and CEO Alex Jones (no, not that one) has also appeared on Carlson's show. Stefani, a pop star who once advocated for LGBTQ+ rights and fundraised for Barack Obama, posted her approval of Roumie's Carlson appearance on social media – which led surprised fans to bemoan her 'Maga makeover'. Hallow's rightwing connections go deeper: its early investors include Peter Thiel – a leading Silicon Valley Trump supporter – and the venture capital firm Narya, co-founded by the US vice-president JD Vance.
As well as spiritual and political forces, there are also commercial ones at play. The stellar success of The Chosen has not gone unnoticed by a beleaguered entertainment industry, especially since the copyright on this IP expired 2,000 years ago.
In February, Amazon released House of David – another 'epic retelling' of a biblical story, with state-of-the-art special effects (including a gigantic Goliath) and huge, horse-mounted battle scenes. It is made by a new studio called Wonder Project, which was founded by a veteran faith-based producer named Jon Erwin (his 2023 movie Jesus Revolution, about young Christians in the 1960s, starred Roumie). Last year, Wonder Project, which counts Jenkins as an investor and 'special adviser', signed a deal with Amazon MGM Studios to produce a series of faith-based movies and TV shows. Erwin has described religious viewers as 'the largest underserved niche audience in the world'.
Netflix has backed several Christian movies, including Mary, a biopic about the mother of Christ, featuring Anthony Hopkins as Herod. Next up is R&B, an update of the biblical love story of Ruth and Boaz, set in modern-day Tennessee. It is part of a 'multi-year and multi-picture' deal to make faith-based content for the streamer.
And if Roumie is not your kind of Jesus, this Easter will see Oscar Isaac voice Christ in The King of Kings, a new feature-length animation based on a book Charles Dickens wrote to explain the life of Jesus to his children. The voice cast also includes Kenneth Branagh, Uma Thurman, Pierce Brosnan and Ben Kingsley.
All this is paving the way for the second coming of yet another Jesus in Jim Caviezel, the star of Mel Gibson's 2004 blockbuster The Passion of the Christ, a gory crucifixion drama that earned more than $600m worldwide. Gibson and Caviezel are working on the sequel: The Resurrection of the Christ. Shooting reportedly begins this summer in Italy, with a digitally de-aged Caviezel back in the crown of thorns. Gibson has been planning the film for years; now, conditions are finally ripe. Talking to Joe Rogan in January, he promised the movie would be 'an acid trip … In order to really tell the story properly, you have to really start with the fall of the angels, which means you're in another place, you're in another realm. You need to go to hell.'
When it comes to separation of church and state, so to speak, Gibson and Caviezel come with their own political baggage. Gibson was cast into the wilderness after an antisemitic rant in 2006, but has spent the past few years working his way back into Hollywood's inner circle; in January, Trump appointed Gibson as a 'special ambassador' to Hollywood, along with Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone. Predictably, all three were vocal supporters of the president's election campaign. Gibson told a reporter that Trump's Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, had 'the IQ of a fence post'.
Caviezel, meanwhile, has acted in other faith-based productions, but also embraced wild conspiracy theories. Past co-workers have alleged that, on set, Caviezel was prone to rambling monologues, Islamophobia, Hitler imitations and inappropriate comments, to the extent they dubbed him 'the Cavortex'. In 2023, Caviezel starred in Sound of Freedom, a faith-tinged thriller based on Tim Ballard, a real-life vigilante who supposedly rescued children abducted by sex traffickers (Ballard and his operation have since been discredited). Gibson was an executive producer on the movie. When Caviezel was promoting it, he frequently referenced the chemical adrenochrome – a key component of the QAnon conspiracy theory, which alleged baselessly that Trump was pitted against a secret cabal of Washington paedophiles, who were extracting adrenochrome from frightened children to use as an elixir of youth. In spite, or perhaps because of this, the Sound of Freedom took more than $250m at the box office worldwide.
The boom in faith-based content could be seen as a reflection of the political climate, but it is also the result of an alternative cultural ecosystem that has been growing away from the limelight for more than a decade, while all eyes were focused on Hollywood. In some senses, it is a grassroots movement, albeit with help from a network of powerful allies.
Of particular significance is Angel Studios. Founded in Utah by the Mormon Harmon brothers and originally launched as VidAngel in 2014, its initial purpose was to censor Hollywood content for Christian viewers by filtering out scenes that were considered offensive, such as those featuring violence, profanity or nudity. After a number of studios took legal action over copyright infringement in 2016, the firm rebranded in 2021 as Angel Studios and started creating its own content.
Angel Studios had noticed The Two Thieves, Jenkins's 2014 short film featuring Roumie, which tells the story of Jesus's death from the perspective of the thieves crucified alongside him. When Jenkins explained his plans for The Chosen, Angel suggested he raise the budget by crowdfunding, via the studio's extensive network of Christian supporters. A call-out raised over $11m from more than 18,000 supporters and they were off to the races. Angel has used this crowdfunding method many times since: circumventing traditional industry gatekeepers and going straight to the audience, who receive dividends for their investments, plus other perks, such as appearing as an extra.
The first four seasons of The Chosen were funded this way. Now, says Jenkins, 'the bulk of our income comes from donations to a nonprofit, the overwhelming majority of which goes directly into production of the next season'. But they are not rolling in cash, he stresses: 'Our show is available free and the licence fees we get from commercial distribution don't come close to covering the full cost of the production of each season.'
Now, Angel Studios looks as if it is aiming to become a faith-based Netflix, building a library of free, faith-based content on its streaming platform: miniseries, children's animations (it is behind The King of Kings), modern-day dramas, even standup comedy. Next up is Zero AD, a biblical epic by the Sound of Freedom director that features Gael García Bernal and Sam Worthington, with Caviezel as Herod.
In marketing terms, too, Angel has been innovative. The studio picked up Sound of Freedom after it was discarded by Fox and turned it into a hit partly by inviting viewers to 'pay it forward' – contributing money to 'increase the audience and reach' of the film and paying for tickets so others could see it for free. (Regardless of whether those gift tickets were used, it was all money in the bank from the studio's point of view.) For its biopic Bonhoeffer, about a German pastor who stood up to the Nazis, it offered 'free tickets for antisemites', because, as co-founder Jeffrey Harmon said: 'Who needs to know the evils of antisemitism more than antisemites?'
Angel and other faith-based production companies have a ready-made network of church groups to help publicise their films, especially in the US. Churches can apply to screen episodes of The Chosen, for example, or download sermon notes. In addition, religious and rightwing media outlets such as Fox News, Breitbart and the Christian Post are only too happy to help with promotion. Now, with acceptance by Amazon and Netflix, this alternative ecosystem is taking over the mainstream.
Jenkins has tried hard to avoid the politics. He points out that his cast and crew 'come from every conceivable political and religious (or lack thereof) perspective, as does our audience'. Indeed, Elizabeth Tabish, who plays Mary Magdalene in The Chosen, recently described herself as a 'hardcore leftist' in Vanity Fair, saying: 'I love Bernie Sanders. I believe in healthcare and education for all. I believe that America's best quality is taking care of refugees. I think those are deeply Christian values.'
Ultimately, says Jenkins, 'we're making a show about the people of first-century Galilee. If someone wants to take that story and use it for political purposes, that's none of our business. Both sides do it, sadly, exploiting the parts of the story that support their narrative while conveniently ignoring the parts that don't.' For him and Roumie, just staying grounded in the face of such overwhelming, destabilising success is challenge enough. 'The scripts are still written on a laptop on the couch and the filming is still a group of flawed artists trying to accurately capture humanity,' he says. 'We keep each other accountable, but are also fully aware that we're not this good.'