“The Chosen” premiered in 2017 with its pilot episode, “The Shepherd.” Jenkins then had the idea to create a multi-season show about Jesus and his followers. VidAngel — now Angel Studios — saw “The Shepherd” and decided to partner with Jenkins to create “The Chosen,” which became the largest-ever crowdfunded television series.
Angel Studios created the pay-it-forward model, which allowed others to donate financially to fund “The Chosen,” enabling others to watch it for free. However, Jenkins explained in his video announcement that of the pay-it-forward contributions, “less than half of it actually came to us. It was somewhere around 40%.”
Jenkins explained further that “The Chosen” was “solely responsible for the financing of future seasons.” Additionally, they had to form a company, pay more than 65 full-time employees as well as the cast, run marketing campaigns, and more.
In 2022, realizing the current model was not sustainable, “The Chosen” came to a new agreement with Angel Studios, which allowed them to shift part of their relationship to the Come and See Foundation — a nonprofit whose mission is getting “The Chosen” to the entire world and financing its production. With this agreement, new seasons of the show were released on “The Chosen” app and on Angel Studios simultaneously before anywhere else.
Shortly after the agreement, however, Angel Studios “breached our contract on multiple occasions to the extent that we believed it should be terminated, which would dissolve our relationship with Angel,” Jenkins explained.
In order to solve the dispute, a third-party arbitrator was used and on May 28 the arbitrator “comprehensively affirmed our position and agreed that the contract had been breached,” Jenkins said. The relationship between “The Chosen” and Angel Studios is effectively over.
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