Dallas Jenkins Unveils 5 New Projects in Expansive Chosen Biblical Universe
- Michael Foust Crosswalk Headlines Contributor
- Updated Sep 23, 2024
The creator and director of The Chosen announced a studio rebranding and a massive expansion of the Chosen universe Friday with five new projects, telling fans the new content will be "faithful to the Scriptures" while aiming to captivate the hearts and minds of the "next generation." Dallas Jenkins unveiled the new projects at the Chosen Con fan event in Orlando, announcing that two projects are already in production: an animated children's series for 2025, The Chosen Adventures, and a reality program, The Chosen In the Wild with Bear Grylls.
"We've been doing this under your nose," he said to laughter.
Other future projects include The Way of the Chosen, a series on the book of Acts; The Chosen: Book of Moses, a three-season series; and Joseph, a limited one-season series about the Old Testament patriarch. All five projects are either in production or development.
Bible consultants, Jenkins reassured fans, "must approve of every single project that we do."
"Everything must pass that test of being faithful to God, faithful to the Scriptures, honoring the character and intentions of the Gospels and of the entire Bible," he said. "And that will never change."
Meanwhile, the studio behind The Chosen, The Chosen, Inc., is rebranding as 5&2 Studios.
The future projects were unveiled as Jenkins and his team continue to produce future series of The Chosen. Season 5 will be released in 2025, with Seasons 6 and 7 launching in 2027 and 2028, respectively.
Jenkins and his wife, Amanda, expressed their commitment to remaining faithful to their calling amid success. She is the lead creator of The Chosen's additional content.
"God really pressed on me what happened to the Israelites when they actually made it to the Promised Land, and they fell away," she said. "Abundance can be dangerous because we wander when things are going well."
God "warned us of success," Dallas said.
It is essential to "be more vigilant when you have abundance," he added.
The Chosen Adventures is a 14-episode animated series that follows a pair of 9-year-old children who encounter Jesus in 30 A.D. Capernaum. It will feature the voices of The Chosen cast, along with Paul Walter Hauser, Yvonne Orji, and Jordin Sparks. It's been in the works for at least 18 months, Dallas Jenkins said.
It is important, Amanda Jenkins said, to connect with young children. The goal is to instill a "love for Scripture at a young age."
"Those seeds sprout and grow into their teenage years and on," she said.
Ryan Swanson, a co-writer for The Chosen, is the showrunner and executive producer for The Chosen Adventures.
"Jesus is the central character in the show," Swanson said.
An animated series can run for years since the characters don't age, allowing the actors' voices to remain consistent throughout, Dallas said.
"We can be telling these stories for years and years and years and be contributing to the conversation for the hearts and minds of kids all over the world who, right now, are being told different things than what the Chosen Adventures is telling them," Dallas said.
The Chosen In the Wild with Bear Grylls is a six-episode unscripted program that will follow adventurer Bear Grylls (Man vs. Wild) as he takes the cast and creator of The Chosen into the wild.
"He loves Jesus, and He loves The Chosen," Dallas said.
Dallas said the one-season Joseph series is scheduled to be released before Season 7 of The Chosen.
Joseph and his family lived prior to Moses, Dallas noted.
"These stories are the reason that Moses was given the law, and Moses's stories are the reason that Jesus came," he said. "We want that through the line, through all of these projects -- even when they're Old Testament projects, they're really ultimately Jesus projects. We're going to cover some of the backstory of Jacob and Rachel and Leah, and we're going to get into the birth of the 12 brothers who were, of course, the forebears of the 12 tribes of Israel."
The Way of the Chosen, the series about the book of Acts, will feature the cast of The Chosen. Its title is drawn from passages in Acts that refer to early Christianity as "the Way."
"We're going to bring the birth of the early church" to the screen, he said.
The Chosen: Book of Moses, he said, will cover "three of the most consequential moments of the Moses story and the journey, of course, out of Egypt."
"If God is constantly teaching us about Red Sea moments, then I think it's time to portray the Red Sea moment," he said. "Some of the most iconic moments in all of Scripture and in all of history" are from the story of Moses," he said.
The Chosen has been viewed by more than 720 million people across 175 countries.
"We're going to bring our loaves and fish," Dallas said of the new projects, "and God's going to do the multiplication."
WATCH: Introducing The Chosen Adventures | The Chosen
Photo Credit: ©Getty Images
Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
