Business
This TV series about Jesus is making millions — at the box office
This Easter weekend, theaters from Torrance to Temecula will be showing films such as “A Minecraft Movie” and Ryan Coogler’s vampire thriller “Sinners.” Alongside those movies, many will also be showing an eight-hour “binge fest” of the latest season of “The Chosen,” the popular streaming series that chronicles the life of Jesus.
Bingeing a series on the big screen is highly unusual, particularly as streaming businesses and movie theaters have become increasingly at odds over attracting audiences.
But the unconventional distribution strategy has proved to be a win — for the show’s creator, who sees theatrical presence as a marketing tool, and for theater owners, who are looking for new ways to draw in audiences and see a potential opportunity in popular streaming shows.
“Just think about if the first episode of ‘The White Lotus,’ or the last episode, was shown in theaters, how many people would come,” said Bob Bagby, president and chief executive of B&B Theaters, whose Red Oak 12 theater in Dallas hosted the world premiere for “The Chosen.” “We would certainly welcome other streamers.”
“The Chosen” was perhaps the ideal candidate for such an experiment.
Since its premiere in 2017, “The Chosen” has developed a devoted fan base and spanned five seasons so far. It can be viewed for free online on “The Chosen” app, though the new season will be available to stream on Amazon Prime — after its theatrical run is expected to end April 24, but before it hits the app.
Since “The Chosen: Last Supper Part 1” arrived in theaters March 28, the three multi-episode installments of the current season have grossed more than $40 million at the U.S. box office, underscoring the growing niche for faith-based content.
“It’s a great marketing tool,” said Dallas Jenkins, show creator, director and producer. “We make a little bit of money on it. Our actors get more money. It’s a way to help sustain this company that we’ve started.”
Though the most passionate fans are Christian, or strongly religious, about 30% to 40% of its audience are not churchgoers or traditional believers in Christianity, Jenkins said.
“It is the greatest story ever told … but it’s always been on stained-glass windows, or statues,” he said. “There’s a formality to it, a rigidity to it. And what we keep hearing over and over from nonbelievers is, ‘Yeah, I’m not a Christian. I don’t go to church. … But this is a great story, and I love seeing a Jesus that laughs with his friends at weddings and dances and tells jokes … and has a lot of the same human experiences that we do.’”
Jenkins first brought portions of “The Chosen” to the big screen in 2021, beginning with a Christmas special he intended as a one-night-only showing with specialty distributor Fathom Entertainment to surprise fans. That turned into a multi-week theatrical run that grossed $13.8 million.
Buoyed by the success of the special, “The Chosen” then premiered the beginning and the finale of its third season in theaters. By Season 4 the entire eight-episode narrative was available in theaters in multi-episode portions and eventually grossed $32 million.
“Last year we thought that we had reached a bit of a ceiling with how many people were interested in coming to the theater to watch a TV show,” Jenkins said. “Certainly, it was more than the industry would have ever thought or predicted.”
This season’s box office total has already surpassed that amount.
In fact, Season 5 of “The Chosen” is now the biggest movie or project in the 21-year history of Fathom Entertainment, a joint venture of movie theater chains AMC, Regal Cinemas and Cinemark. Faith-based content like “The Chosen” has become one of the bigger categories for the distributor.
“To have this many people come out to a movie theater and pay for it and actually see it is pretty remarkable,” said Ray Nutt, chief executive of Fathom Entertainment.
He said that he’s had discussions about other episodic content that could play in theaters, but that the content must be right for such a strategy.
“It can’t be just a movie that somebody decides to divide into parts and get another bite at the apple, if you will,” Nutt said. “It’s got to be something that is episodic, that is going to bring people back.”
The excitement for the latest season of “The Chosen” was palpable at its world premiere last month at B&B Theaters Red Oak 12 in Dallas.
Fans began showing up days in advance, asking theater staff if they could help out with the event. When the day arrived, the premiere was attended by about 1,000 people, including cast, crew and fans. Additional spectators watched along the sidelines in hopes of glimpsing the series’ stars.
“We are seeing a whole new audience, a growing audience for these faith-based films,” said Bagby, who also serves as chair of the Cinema United trade group. “Reaching an older audience is difficult these days, but this is a streaming show that these guests have watched and enjoyed, and now they get to come together with other believers and other friends and watch it together on the big screen.”
The series is financed by a religious nonprofit, which pays Jenkins’ company, 5&2 Studios, to oversee production of “The Chosen.” The company makes money from licensing fees and sells merchandise to fans.
Inspired by the ensemble focus of “The West Wing,” the humanity and authenticity of “Friday Night Lights” and the multiple perspectives of “The Wire,” Jenkins said he sees “The Chosen” as a historical drama, rather than explicitly faith-based.
“I’m not enamored with the term ‘faith-based’ because it tends to kind of exclude a large part of the audience,” he said. “It happens to be about a religious figure, of course … but I think we’re showing that anyone can appreciate this.”
Faith-based content is a niche but also a burgeoning theatrical market. Since these stories typically rely on character-driven narratives and are not as cast-dependent, overall budgets tend to be lower, said David A. Gross, who writes a movie industry newsletter.
Although not every film will bring in box office numbers like Mel Gibson’s 2004 hit “The Passion of the Christ,” which grossed more than $610 million worldwide, movies in this sector have done well with audiences in the last few years, Gross said.
That includes 2023’s “Sound of Freedom” from distributor Angel Studios, which made more than $250 million worldwide at the box office. Last year, there were 17 domestic faith-based wide releases, which grossed a total of $237.4 million worldwide, Gross added.
“It’s the story and point-of-view that counts,” he wrote in an email. “When they resonate, these audiences show up.”
Nike is cutting about 1,400 jobs in its operations division, mostly from its technology department, the company said Thursday.
In a note to employees, Venkatesh Alagirisamy, the chief operating officer of Nike, said that management was nearly done reorganizing the business for its turnaround plan, and that the goal was to operate with “more speed, simplicity and precision.”
“This is not a new direction,” Mr. Alagirisamy told employees. “It is the next phase of the work already underway.”
Nike, the world’s largest sportswear company, is trying to recover after missteps led to a prolonged sales slump, in which the brand leaned into lifestyle products and away from performance shoes and apparel. Elliott Hill, the chief executive, has worked to realign the company around sports and speed up product development to create more breakthrough innovations.
In March, Nike told investors that it expected sales to fall this year, with growth in North America offset by poor performance in Asia, where the brand is struggling to rejuvenate sales in China. Executives said at the time that more volatility brought on by the war in the Middle East and rising oil prices might continue to affect its business.
The reorganization has involved cuts across many parts of the organization, including at its headquarters in Beaverton, Ore. Nike slashed some corporate staff last year and eliminated nearly 800 jobs at distribution centers in January.
“You never want to have to go through any sort of layoffs, but to re-center the company, we’re doing some of that,” Mr. Hill said in an interview earlier this year.
Mr. Alagirisamy told employees that Nike was reshaping its technology team and centering employees at its headquarters and a tech center in Bengaluru, India. The layoffs will affect workers across North America, Europe and Asia.
The cuts will also affect staffing in Nike’s factories for Air, the company’s proprietary cushioning system. Employees who work on the supply chain for raw materials will also experience changes as staff is integrated into footwear and apparel teams.
Nike’s Converse brand, which has struggled for years to revive sales, will move some of its engineering resources closer to the factories they support, the company said.
Mr. Alagirisamy said the moves were necessary to optimize Nike’s supply chain, deploy technology faster and bolster relationships with suppliers.
A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.
The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.
The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.
The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.
It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.
However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.
Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.
Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.
“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.
In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”
The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.
“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.
Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.
Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.
Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.
The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.
But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.
Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.
A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.
“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .
Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.
Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.
Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.
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Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.
But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.
While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.
“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.
It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”
Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.
“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.
The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.
Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.
Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”
Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.
Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.
“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”
For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.
“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”
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