Dallas Jenkins takes to the Big Apple to explain the rationale for going directly to the people for financing.
If your read our site regularly, you already know that The Chosen is the all-time champion in crowdfunding among media projects, having raised more than $10 million from 16,000 people. The first ever multi-season TV series about the life of Jesus, it obliterated the old record, and then went on to raise even more money in subsequent crowdfunding campaigns.
Series director Dallas Jenkins, a devout Christian, made the rounds among the media in New York City today, stopping by the Fox Business channel and radio station AM 970 The Answer to talk about the project. During his interview with anchorman Charles Payne at Fox, he explained that the reasoning for not raising money for the show in Hollywood is that he wanted "to get it right", which necessitated maintaining creative control.
"I don't have anything against Hollywood, but I thought the Hollywood golden rule is, he who has the gold makes the rules, and we wanted to make our own rules and make sure we could control the content of it and control the direction of it, so we just decided to go straight to the people."
Well said and well done. Sounds like Jenkins is familiar with Jesus' exhortation to His apostles when he was sending them out "like sheep in the midst of wolves" to "be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves." (Matthew 10:16)
The Chosen has already put out the first half of season one and you can find it via this link to the Vidangel streaming platform. The remaining four episodes are currently in post production and should be available around Thanksgiving.