Dallas Jenkins, creator of The Chosen, is expanding his creative universe with the launch of 5&2 Studios, and he’s already working on three new projects.
The first wave of projects includes an animated series, a survival show with Bear Grylls and a three-season series about Moses.
First up is The Chosen Adventures, an animated 14-episode series set in the same time and landscape as The Chosen that looks at Jesus’ interaction with a group of children he encounters in the wilderness. Paul Walter Hauser (Black Bird) and Yvonne Orji (Insecure) are currently attached to the project. After the news broke, Hauser responded to a comment on X saying that the series will be good and not “religious schlock idiocy like Left Behind 5” — an interesting reference considering Jenkins’ father wrote the original Left Behind series.
If I can calmly correct you-
I did The Chosen animated series because
1) I love Jesus
2) I thought the writing was good
3) I enjoy watching The Chosen
4) I act for money to provide for my familyI’m not making religious schlock idiocy like Left Behind 5. This’ll be good. https://t.co/D9VJKJUNgx
— Paul Walter Hauser (@PWHIsAWrestler) September 21, 2024
After that, Jenkins will team up with survivalist Bear Grylls for The Chosen in the Wild, a six-episode adventure series where Grylls puts Jenkins and various Chosen actors through outdoor survival challenges.
“For me as a rugged indoorsman, I’m very scared about what I’m going to be subjected to,” Jenkins joked. “But I’m willing to take one for the team.”
And once The Chosen wraps, Jenkins will dive into his next flagship project: a three-season series on the life of Moses.
“There actually isn’t a story in the Bible, possibly even including Jesus, that has more pop culture, historical moments, phrases and imagery than the story of Moses,” Jenkins said. “There’s an epic story that can be told. In the midst of it was a reluctant Tony Soprano, basically the guy who was being tasked with leading the largest family in the world — and didn’t want it. Tony Soprano was always fighting for power, and Moses was actually always trying to give it up. And yet, he’s the one that God chose to lead the biggest religious movement and cultural movement in the history of the world.”
Jenkins also teased a few other projects he’s working on at the moment, including a series on the Apostles and a limited series about Joseph.
So, when can audiences expect to see these projects? That’s still up in the air. Jenkins is still in talks with multiple streamers about an exclusive relationship for both The Chosen and its expanded universe.
“The mothership show will always be free, we promised that, and we’ll never change that,” he said. “The other projects, it will depend. If there’s a streamer that is willing to pay enough to sustain us and make sure that we don’t have to ask people for money, then that’s great. But we always are going to have a heart to make sure that people who can’t afford to pay for it, or particularly in third world countries, that they have access to it.”
