‘Chosen’ creator Dallas Jenkins makes big announcements about future of show, other projects

CNA Staff, Sep 25, 2024 / 06:00 am

Dallas Jenkins, the creator, director, and writer of the hit series “The Chosen,” made several big announcements regarding the future of the show and the launch of new projects during the second annual “Chosen” fan convention, ChosenCon, on Sept. 20 at the Orlando World Center Marriott in Orlando, Florida.

The announcements included details about several new shows, ranging from an animated children’s series to a reality show in partnership with celebrity survivalist and adventurer Bear Grylls, as well as the creation of a new production studio.

5&2 Studios, created by Jenkins, is the new independent studio that will oversee the production of “The Chosen” franchise and will produce future film and television projects set in the biblical world. 5&2 Studios is currently in production of “The Chosen Adventures” and “The Chosen in the Wild with Bear Grylls.”

“The Chosen Adventures” is an animated series following 9-year-old Abby in the city of Capernaum and her friend Joshua and features the voices of actors Paul Walter Hauser and Yvonne Orji as well as Grammy-nominated artist Jordin Sparks and cast members from “The Chosen” including Jonathan Roumie, Paras Patel, Elizabeth Tabish, and Noah James.

“This is a show that kids are going to love, parents are going to love watching it with them, grandparents are going to love watching it with them,” Jenkins told CNA in an interview at ChosenCon. “We’re taking the stories of Jesus, the stories of the Gospels, the biblical concepts and truths and showing you them through the eyes of children.”

Elizabeth Tabish, the actress who portrays Mary Magdalene in “The Chosen,” will be a voice in the animated series and said the new show is “very family-friendly, very charming, and very smart and funny too — I think parents are going to like it as much as their kids.”

“The Chosen in the Wild With Bear Grylls” is a six-episode, unscripted adventure series where Grylls takes one cast member from the show into the wild to explore their personal stories of faith and dive deeper into their perspectives on the series and the characters they portray. 

“It’s a really exciting partnership bringing together what I do, which is ‘Running Wild’ and taking Hollywood folk into the wild, and then ‘The Chosen’ and what they do, and we’ve never done a partnership where we actually do like a bespoke version of ‘Running Wild’ for a TV show, but it felt like the right time, with the right partners,” Grylls told CNA in an interview at ChosenCon.

Grylls shared that he has “been a sort of quiet fan of ‘The Chosen’ from the beginning” and that it has helped him in his own faith journey.

“I love everything that ‘The Chosen’ stands for, showing faith in a beautiful kind of real light,” he said. 

Four out of the six episodes have been filmed so far and their “stories are beautiful and empowering,” Grylls said.

He added that he believes fans of the show will enjoy getting to know “the actors as people, what they’re really like, their journeys, their journeys of faith through the whole thing, from different backgrounds, different cultures, and the friendships they’ve made, to get to know them in a real way.”

5&2 Studios is also developing three new shows including a three-season series about Moses, a limited series following the story of Joseph, and then, following “The Chosen,” a series about the Acts of the Apostles.