The Chosen has revealed that Hollywood is missing out on making prominent television shows even more successful. The faith-based television series is a biblical adaptation that was created by Dallas Jenkins (The Best Christmas Pageant Ever) and depicts the life of Jesus of Nazareth (Jonathan Roumie). The cast of characters around him includes Shahar Isaac as Simon Peter, Elizabeth Tabish as Mary Magdalene, Noah James as Andrew, Paras Patel as Matthew, George H. Xanthis as John, Shaan Sharma as Shmuel, Nick Shakoour as Zebedee, Giavani Cairo as Thaddeus, and Jordan Walker Ross as Little James.

When the show began airing in 2019, it debuted on the subscription service VidAngel. However, as the show has expanded, its release has become more complicated. Beginning with season 3, episodes of the series have debuted in theaters in batches of two or three episodes apiece before landing on a wide variety of streaming platforms including Netflix, YouTube, and Prime Video. However, for The Chosen season 5 (which is the most recent season) through the upcoming season 7, the episodes will be exclusively available on Prime Video for 90 days after their theatrical premieres and then become available for free.

The Chosen Season 5 Has Seen The Biggest Box Office Performance Of The Franchise

The Season Revolves Around The Last Supper

Recently, the Chosen season 5 box office has turned out incredibly solid numbers for the series. The season, which was divided into weekly presentations тιтled The Last Supper – Part 1 through Part 3, has broken a number of box office records during its run throughout Spring 2025. This includes Part 1 earning the highest-grossing debut weekend for the series with $11.8 million and all three Last Supper parts collectively grossing $47.9 million, which is the highest that any season has earned in theaters so far. Below, see the box office performance of every theatrical presentation in the franchise:

There are likely several factors that helped The Chosen break records for the overall series. The first is the fact that it premiered during Easter season. The story of The Last Supper is inherently linked to Easter, which likely made the project tempting holiday viewing for its core audience. Additionally, the subтιтle The Last Supper hid the fact that it was part of an ongoing series, because including “season 5” in the тιтle might have scared away potential audience members who had not yet seen the first four seasons and worried they might not be able to keep up.

Regardless of the reasons for its specific success in 2025, the ongoing box office success of the series is something that should not be ignored, especially considering the fact that The Last Supper Part 2 and Part 3 ultimately made less than the premieres of season 3 and season 4 did in theaters, showcasing the series’ longstanding ability to draw in audiences.

The Chosen Is A Rare TV Show That’s Gotten Theatrical Releases

Television Has Not Historically Competed At The Box Office

What makes the success of The Chosen so unusual is that, historically, there have not been many television series that have received substantial theatrical releases. There are quite a few reasons for this, including the fact that television and cinema were viewed as compeтιтors during the rise of television, fighting over viewers in the entertainment marketplace. In the 1950s, this led to the implementation of many techniques to make movies into must-see spectacles, including 3D presentations, larger formats, and movies with more epic stories such as religious dramas like 1959’s Ben-Hur and splashy, big-budget musicals like 1961’s West Side Story.

While many properties have made the leap from the small screen to the big screen in movies such as 2000’s Charlie’s Angels, 2008’s Sєx and the City, 2012’s 21 Jump Street, and 2017’s Baywatch, actual episodes of television very rarely play in theaters except as part of special limited presentations. However, episode packages playing in theaters isn’t an entirely unheard of phenomenon. In fact, it has taken place as early as 1955, when the Davy Crockett compilation The King of the Wild Frontier premiered.

Other series that have distributed episodes or episodic packages in theaters include the 1973 miniseries Scenes from a Marriage (which was edited into a feature presentation), Picard (which has its final episodes play in IMAX in 2023), and Yellowstone (which had the first two hours of season 5 play in AMC Theatres weeks before it debuted on Paramount Network).

Hollywood Shouldn’t Ignore The Chosen Season 5’s Box Office Success

It Might Not Only Be A Faith-Based Phenomenon

It would likely be unwise for Hollywood to ignore the success of the series at the box office. The biblical series could be too easily written off as appealing to its core religious audience, which has recently been tempted to theaters quite frequently, particularly for new releases from Angel Studios, the outfit behind the 2023 smash hit Sound of Freedom. However, this release model is promising for general audiences as well, especially if The Chosen season 6 continues to show growth over season 5, highlighting its longevity.

The core element that makes the success of The Chosen so intriguing is the fact that the show is already set to premiere on streaming for free down the line. However, audiences have been tempted to leave their homes and seek out the episodes in theaters. For non-faith-based series that have similarly devoted audiences, this approach could potentially be replicated.

More TV Shows Could Benefit From Theatrical Releases

Bigger Streamers And Networks Could Be Missing Out

It seems highly probable that flagship series from streamers and networks could see similar results at the box office if they were converted into theatrical presentations, particularly presentations that debuted before the small-screen premieres of the shows in question. This may not be the case for shows telling smaller-scale stories such as the restaurant drama The Bear, but big-budget spectacles including HBO’s House of the Dragon, FX on Hulu’s Shōgun, and Netflix’s Stranger Things could all potentially benefit from a theatrical release, especially because they come with huge built-in fanbases.

As The Chosen seems to have revealed, even a weeklong theatrical run in limited theaters could potentially boost the profits of major network or streaming series. In addition to the raw box office numbers a spectacle series might earn, this is because theatrical releases can operate as marketing campaigns for a show’s small-screen run. This approach has already been used by streamers in a different form, as streaming movies such as Prime Video’s Saltburn and Air or Apple TV+’s Napoleon and Killers of the Flower Moon have had theatrical runs as preludes to their at-home debuts.

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