After months of delay and a legal dispute, the primary episode of “The Chosen,” Season Four, dropped on the show’s app on Sunday.
“The wait is finally over. The response from those that’ve seen Season 4 in theaters was that that is our greatest season, so I am unable to wait to deliver these episodes free and straightforward to the world,” said Dallas Jenkins, the creator, producer and director of the wildly popular TV series on Jesus’ life.
Jenkins first announced the stalling of Season Four to the app in early March, citing legal matters as reason for the delay. The season had premiered in theatres in February 2024, and after the delay was announced, all eight episodes were released in theatres the week of Easter at a reduced price. “The Chosen” will release two latest episodes every week on the app through the month of June, on Sundays and Thursdays. Season Four DVDs, Jenkins said, are also shipping out, allowing viewers to look at all eight episodes directly.
The legal dispute behind the delay involved The Chosen LLC, an organization that now has 65 full-time employees, and its onetime partner Angel Studios, a media company based in Provo, Utah. While Angel Studios — which was also behind the 2023 Christian thriller “Sound of Freedom,” which grossed over $250 million on the box office — was initially answerable for the first distribution of the show, “that is not any longer the case,” Jenkins told Religion News Service in an interview on May 21.
Jenkins said The Chosen LLC and Angel Studios had “different ideas of methods to interpret each the contract and what is going on to sustain us in our future.” Ultimately, he said, the pay-it-forward model that originated with Angel Studios would not allow “The Chosen” to fulfill its goals of reaching a billion people — including those that cannot pay for it — while also financing future seasons, said Jenkins.
He said in a video announcement posted Wednesday that roughly 40% of the pay-it-forward contributions got here to The Chosen LLC. The rest, he said, went to marketing and to Angel Studios. In an announcement, Angel Studios said it has “sent $115,189,337.27 in royalties” to “The Chosen” for the reason that release of Season One.
“Our strong assessment is that for us to sustain ourselves in the longer term, and to find a way to not only generate income for the cash that has already been spent, but in addition for future seasons, we’ve got to seek out a latest path, and we’ve got to seek out a latest type of partner,” said Jenkins in an interview with RNS predating an arbitration decision.
To secure the financial way forward for the show, Jenkins said, The Chosen LLC entered right into a latest agreement with Angel Studios in 2022 that incorporated the Come and See Foundation, a nonprofit whose donations go on to the marketing, production and international translations of “The Chosen.” The latest agreement also transformed the old Chosen app into the Angel app and created a latest Chosen app dedicated solely to “The Chosen.” New seasons would premiere concurrently on the Angel and Chosen apps before being released elsewhere.
Jenkins said within the video that The Chosen LLC contends that, shortly after the agreement, Angel Studios “breached our contract on multiple occasions, to the extent that we consider it ought to be terminated.” Jenkins didn’t elaborate on the main points of the alleged breaches. According to Angel Studios’ filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Angel Studios entered right into a latest content license agreement with The Chosen LLC in October 2022, and The Chosen LLC sought to terminate the agreement for “alleged material breaches of contract” in April 2023 and again in October 2023.
“Revenues recognized in the course of the years ended December 31, 2023, December 31, 2022, and December 31, 2021 and derived from the Chosen Agreement were $40 million, $68 million, and $116 million, respectively,” Angel Studio’s filings claim. “We strongly dispute all such alleged material breaches and intend to vigorously defend our interests within the matter.”
Eventually, The Chosen LLC and Angel Studios engaged a third-party arbitrator to settle the dispute, and on Tuesday, the arbitrator agreed with The Chosen LLC that the contract had been breached, in keeping with Jenkins.
“The contract is indeed terminated, and The Chosen’s relationship with Angel Studios is effectively over,” Jenkins said in Wednesday’s video.
In a May 30 statement shared with RNS, Angel Studios said it plans to appeal the choice.
“The team at Angel Studios is honoured to have been instrumental within the founding and unbelievable growth of The Chosen,” said Angel Studios CEO Neal Harmon within the statement. “Our long hours of labor during the last 8 years by teams of programmers, marketers, translators, licensing experts, and innovators have helped it change into the worldwide success that it’s today.
“Sadly, The Chosen, Inc. selected to terminate its agreement with us. We hope that at some point the agreement will probably be restored—and we plan to pursue the appeal provision that Angel and The Chosen agreed to as the method for resolving disagreements privately.”
In the short term, Season Four of “The Chosen” will only be released on the Chosen app, slightly than on each that app and within the Angel app, before being made available on other platforms. Lionsgate, which distributes “The Chosen” to 3rd parties reminiscent of Amazon Prime, Netflix and Peacock, was not impacted by the arbitration.
Jenkins noted that Angel Studios and The Chosen LLC initially tried to settle their disagreement privately, seeing it as a “biblical mandate” to accomplish that. He also gave Angel Studios credit for its role within the creation of the show, telling RNS it “would not exist in its current form” without the previous partners. While he understands fans’ annoyance with the delay, Jenkins told RNS it’s unlucky that individuals have been jumping to conclusions about “either side” being “greedy or unbiblical.”
“It’s frustrating, however it’s a process, it is a needed process for the long-term way forward for the show,” he said.
With over 200 million viewers, “The Chosen” has far outpaced the reach of typical faith-based fare, receiving shoutouts from the likes of Kourtney Kardashian and country singer Blake Shelton. In addition to the Chosen app, viewers can currently watch Seasons One through Three on Amazon Prime, Hulu and Peacock and Season One on Netflix. Seven seasons are expected in total, and “The Chosen” is currently filming Season Five. Jenkins said the 600 fans who were invited to the Utah set as extras added extra emotional depth to the Holy Week scenes they have been filming.
“If Season Five lives as much as the intensity and the fervour that is happening on set, it’s gonna obviously be our most impactful season yet,” Jenkins said.
© Religion Network News
