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--:-- Georgia Howe: Last month, the faith-based series The Chosen had a very successful ride through the box office. The independent production about the life of Jesus and his disciples took an impressive third place behind big-budget productions Wakanda Forever and The Menu. The special in-theater screening of the first two episodes from the show's third season ended up earning $8.8 million, and that success is turning heads in the entertainment world.
--:-- Georgia Howe: I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Saturday, December 24th. And on this Christmas Eve edition of Morning Wire, we take a look back at our interview with the creator and director of The Chosen.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: Hey there, producer Colton here. Do you like to be the first to know about trendy news and current events? If so, you've got to get the Daily Wire Plus app. Not only will you receive mobile notifications whenever something's happening, but you'll also have access to the best commentary to break it all down. Download the Daily Wire Plus app and keep up with the facts no matter where your day takes you.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: Joining us to discuss the success of the hit faith-based series, The Chosen, is its creator, writer, and director, Dallas Jenkins. Well, Dallas, thanks for coming on and congratulations on the success of The Chosen, including now in theaters.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: Thanks for having me on.
--:-- Georgia Howe: First, tell us about what you guys are doing that's different than everyone else in the entertainment sphere, particularly in terms of how you produce the series?
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: Well, I don't know how, I mean, what you guys are doing is pretty different too. And it's this concept of not relying on the traditional system, which I don't hate. And I mean, I love movies. I love TV shows. I love a lot of the streaming platforms, but the traditional platforms and the traditional system doesn't work for everybody. And it oftentimes doesn't help you on the front Sometimes you're knocking on the door and the door is locked.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: In my case, the door was locked because my movie had failed. I had a movie come out in theaters in 2017 and it was a bomb at the box office. And then I had a story idea, an idea for a show about the life of Christ. And most of the rooms in which you would knock on the door are not really interested in doing a Jesus show.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: So between a failure that I was coming off of and the subject matter that I wanted to talk about, a show I wanted to make, there weren't people lining around the block for me. So what we did was we launched The Chosen as a crowdfunded opportunity, meaning my short film, I made this short film about the birth of Christ from the perspective of the shepherds for my church's Christmas Eve service.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: That's all it was intended for. But while I was making it, I had this idea. I mean, I shot this on my friend's farm 20 minutes from my house. We put that out on social media. And at the end of it, I said, look, if you want to invest, we had an opportunity for a public crowdfunding, investment opportunity.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: And so I didn't think it was going to work. It was an idea from a distribution partner that I thought was ridiculous. But the concept was people watch this short film, hear about my idea of the show, and then they can invest. Not a donation. This was actually an investment And I thought well the all crowdfunding record is over million from projects that had big fan bases We have no fan base Well very long story short we ended up generating over million from 19 people around the world investing in this thing.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: And that's what launched season one and since then, because the show is free. So you don't have to sign up. You don't have to give an email address. You don't have to do anything. You don't have to pay anything to watch the show. We also made it in our own app. So you watch it on the chosen app. It's totally free and easy.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: We're not beholden to another platform. That has really given us the freedom to do what we want, which is something you guys understand, of course. But people have the option to donate to it if they so choose. And that's been something that I think has really allowed this show to reach the mass appeal that it has.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: And now we've crossed 100 million viewers around the world. We're in every country now. That whole thing has just happened, I think, because of the fact that we've been doing things different.
--:-- Georgia Howe: You use the term invest rather than donate in the early stages. What do you mean by that?
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: Well, this was literally an investment. The 16,000 plus, the number I think is 16,000 actually, plus people who invested early on, they have an ownership in the show.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: So as the show is generating income and potentially profits over the course of several years, my co-founders and I, we own one part of the business and the other half, I think it's somewhere around 45% of the business is owned by these 16,000 investors.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: So when the show succeeds, they succeed. And we were just able to actually announce recently that they got their money back plus 20%. So we actually delivered on that initial promise.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: And then from now until the end of time, they still have ownership in the show. So if there's ever distributions from profits of this show, they share with us in that. And so it's a really cool opportunity.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: And their investment, I mean, again, I have to be careful with what I say publicly, but their investment has already returned. plus profit, and it's looking extremely good for the future.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now, you provide access to The Chosen for free. So how do you monetize something like this? This is often where those kinds of projects fail. How do you monetize something like The Chosen?
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: Right. So people have the opportunity, if they want, to donate to the show. Now, we've partnered with this organization that was founded. It's called the Come and See Foundation.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: It was founded for the purpose of expanding the show around the world. An outside person came in and said, listen, we want this show to get everywhere. We want to translate it into hundreds of languages. We want it to reach places that you can't reach.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: We want to jumpstart these efforts. Your budgets are lower. We want to get them higher because we want this show to have every opportunity to succeed. So we give people the opportunity to donate to that foundation.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: And that money goes towards production funds, marketing funds, all of that. That's the nonprofit side. Now, the for-profit side has come from merchandise sales, which we were doing early on.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: That has been significant. And then also commercial licensing. So, for example, if there was another platform that after it's been in our app for a period of time, wants to license it.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: I mean, season one has been on Amazon, has been on Netflix, it's been on multiple platforms. And that has generated some income as well. So that's where the for-profit side comes from.
--:-- Dallas Howe: The non-profit side comes from this. And we have people, I'm not saying anything that's not public, because you can see the progress in our app. But we have people donating in excess of millions of dollars.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: I mean, people can donate everything from 15 bucks to, I mean, they can donate whatever they want. And that opportunity that people have has been a supercharge to the show.
--:-- Georgia Howe: It strikes me that a lot of this is very counterintuitive particularly for the Hollywood model. One of the criticisms leveled at Hollywood a lot is that there's so much waste and so much money thrown at projects really unnecessarily. How are you guys managing to be more efficient with your funds?
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: Yeah, well, we have no choice. I mean, that's what's so interesting about what you're saying. It's a really good question because most platforms, networks, studios or whatever, when they launch a new show, well, the first couple of seasons, there's no way it's going to be profitable.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: It's very expensive to put on a new show. You don't know if it's going to find an audience yet. So you're putting money in that you don't know if it's going to pay off. And most shows, I don't know if I want to say most, but a lot of shows don't ever make money because they don't have enough seasons to get the big syndication dollars that can come.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: Or a lot of times movies just don't succeed. So all of that is very, very challenging. Well, what they have going for them is they can take those risks because they've got so much money elsewhere, coming from all the other shows that they've made and movies that they've made.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: So they can pump all that money into it and spend tens of millions of dollars to launch it. Well, we don't have that opportunity or luxury. I mean, the only money that we have is money that comes in from the fans for this particular show.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: So that's made it difficult. But to your point about efficiency, I think it's also made us smarter. You know, every dollar we spend, we consider it to be sacred money.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: And we don't have the ability to nor the desire to just put money towards fluff. That said, the good news is, is that now that we have more money coming in, we are able to pay our cast and crew closer to what they deserve.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: Now, we'll never reach full Hollywood budgets, but the fact that we can pay people better than they were the first couple seasons when we were completely independent, that's been for sure a great advantage.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, it strikes me that soon Hollywood won't be able to pay Hollywood prices for some of these actors.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: One thing you alluded to is that the success of this kind of project and this kind of business model really depends upon the confidence of the investors and the donors. How do you maintain that? Is it transparency?
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: Well, that's a really great question because trust goes in two different directions. One is there's artistic trust. And then there's also spiritual trust, meaning they need to trust that actually the show is going to honor and be faithful to the stories of Jesus and the gospels.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: And that's a big deal. So what we have done is from the beginning, transparency, like you said, has been kind of the hallmark of it. I mean, not only are we a public company, we're a publicly reporting company, but on our social media pages, we just decided from the beginning, you're going to see this all process.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: I'm going to take you behind the scenes of myself, my family, the struggle to make this show. We're going to take you onto the set. So on our YouTube pages, our Instagram page, Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, all of that, you get to see in real time often the progress of this show.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: And what they see is a couple things. One, they see that we're spending the money wisely and that we're actually a professional show that's doing this right. They also get to know us better, which makes them feel more connected.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: And so if you're going to support a show like this, or if you're going to watch a show, even watch a show like this, some people are afraid to watch a Jesus show if they don't feel like they can trust it.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: So they feel like they know us better. And then finally, though, what's very important is that they do believe that I have the character and intentions of Jesus and the Gospels in good hands, that I am actually being faithful to that.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: Now, with all the artistic imagination that we're adding to these stories from the Bible, that's especially important. People do not want to put money towards or even their time towards something that they feel is going to be typically contradictory to the message of Christ.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: And so, that's been a big deal for us. And so, I feel like from the beginning, we've said, look, they can trust me they going to then be more willing to invest literally and figuratively into the show And that been the case
--:-- Georgia Howe: So what next for The Chosen and for your other projects What are we seeing on the horizon here?
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: Well, right now I'm really focused on The Chosen. I mean, other projects are in development, but it's a big enough task for me, especially as the creator of the show.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: I not only have to make the show, I have to market the show. I have to keep the audience engaged. I'm now what they call an influencer. We used an influencer model for this project. So that's a full-time job.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: But, you know, season three out now, you know, the first couple episodes are out and available. The first two seasons are available on the Chosen app. And, you know, you just look it up. It's easy to find.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: But here's the point. Right now, I am editing the rest of season three while writing season four because we're going to start filming in the spring. The train really never stops.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: And so other projects that now people want to make with me now that the show is more successful. You know, those are certainly in development, but I really don't want to take my hand off the plow of this project either, because if this doesn't work, then a lot of other things won't work.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: So we've got projects in development, but for now, right now, I just need to get, I need to get season four going. And when we're done with the seven seasons of The Chosen, I'll nap for about a year and then we'll start working on other things.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now, stepping back and looking at this big picture, the response to The Chosen, which has been overwhelming. What do you think the lesson is here in terms of audience demand? What are they starving for? What are they missing?
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: Well, there's a, and you know this as well as anybody. I mean, the fact is Hollywood is largely dominated by groups of people who don't necessarily have the same values or the same background or faith interest as certain parts of the country.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: That's not their fault. And they have every right to make the products and content that they understand, that they know that reflects their background, the stories that they want to tell.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: But what this shows is that there is a large part of the country and a large part of the world. In fact, Christians represent the biggest or not one of the biggest people groups in the entire world, people who believe in Christ.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: They want this kind of content, and they don't get it. And what's cool about this, though, The Chosen, is that this has also been appealing to people who don't fit into that category.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: So what I think it speaks to is, I think if you're a Christian, this is certainly something that says, hey, look, someone is making a show that reflects my values, my love of Christ, and it's done in a way that can compete artistically with everything else that's out there.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: I don't need to apologize for watching it. I don't need to plug my nose to enjoy it. I can actually enjoy this. And that's proving that this group of people around the world, that number in the billions, deserve good entertainment as well.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: The other thing it shows is that I think even just the message of Christ, even if you don't believe that he was the Son of God, even if you don't believe that he was the Messiah.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: You can still appreciate the stories of first century Galilee and what happened there that certainly changed the world. And so just like I can watch a show like Game of Thrones or a movie like Star Wars and not believe in the force or not believe in dragons.
--:-- Dallas Jenkins: I can still appreciate good storytelling. And I think that's what people are, at least I hope, are responding to with this show.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, Dallas, thank you so much for joining us. That was Chosen creator, Dallas Jenkins. And again, if you haven't seen the series yet, you can watch it on the Chosen app along with other streaming platforms like Prime Video.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's all the time we have this morning. Thanks for waking up with us and Merry Christmas Eve.
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