Faith-based entertainment sees a revival in Hollywood. Defining what it is can be a challenge

This image shows a still from the series "Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints." (Fox Nation via AP)

LOS ANGELES — At the movies this fall, Josh O’Connor plays a hot priest with a complicated past, Keanu Reeves is an angel who lost his wings and Elizabeth Olsen has a romantic dilemma in the afterlife.

Hollywood, it seems, has found God.

But it’s not just starry big-budget Netflix films or A24 indies that are grappling with religion and its place in entertainment. In recent years, there’s been an explosion of films and television made from a confessional perspective that evangelize or portray a particular faith, often Christianity, that have performed particularly well with audiences.

There are animated biblical films from Angel, like the upcoming musical “David,” which the company said has already exceeded US$14 million in theatrical pre-sale tickets ahead of its release this Friday, to docudramas like Martin Scorsese’s “The Saints.” While episodes from Season 2 are still being released, the first season of the Fox Nation series, which premiered last year, was the most watched on the platform.

“There has been a revival, a revolution of sorts, of spirituality and faith content,” proclaimed Traci Blackwell, head of targeted content for Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, at a recent Variety event in Beverly Hills for faith and spirituality in entertainment. Earlier this year, Amazon premiered the first season of its own biblical drama, “House of David,” and gained exclusive U.S. streaming rights to “The Chosen,” a massively popular drama series about the life of Jesus.

‘The Chosen’ effect

Historically some faith-based entertainment has performed well at the box office — Mel Gibson’s 2004 epic “The Passion of the Christ” was notoriously the highest-grossing R-rated film in the U.S. and Canada for two decades. But faith-based hits have been few and far between for most of this century.

“Hollywood has taken a lot of criticism by those in the faith community for not providing films that speak to them, that reflect their values,” said Paul Dergarabedian, Comscore’s senior media analyst, emphasizing the box-office potential of faith-based films.

Studios are realizing faith-based film and television is a worthwhile investment at least in part due to the success of “The Chosen,” which Angel helped launch in 2017, even if it initially took time to see those results.

“It was like pulling teeth to get people to watch it,” recalled Angel CEO and co-founder Neal Harmon. “People have this idea that faith means cheesy or preachy. And we had to break through that barrier.”

Once they did, it paid off. Since Fathom Entertainment began distributing “The Chosen” theatrically in 2023, the series has grossed more than $116 million domestically.

Though not a Christian company, Angel aims to distribute and market “values-based entertainment” that includes but is not limited to stories of faith. They’ve released a host of religious films, with “Zero A.D.,” a biblical epic about the Massacre of the Innocents recounted in the Gospel of Matthew, on the docket for 2026.

Meanwhile, Lionsgate is set to premiere “I Can Only Imagine 2” in theaters February, a sequel to the 2018 biopic starring Dennis Quaid, which was one of the highest-grossing Christian films of all-time in the United States.

Co-director Andrew Erwin said he noticed a “massive shift” take place about five years ago, after years of disconnect between the demand for these kinds of films and Hollywood’s willingness to make them.

“For the first time, movie studios are really giving us a fair shake,” he said, though he thinks the quality of the content was also a factor. “We didn’t have the knowledge of how to do the filmmaking side of things. And so, I think the storytelling has gotten a lot better.”

Lionsgate is also set to distribute the first of Gibson’s two-part sequel to “The Passion of the Christ” in 2027.

Defining ‘faith-based’

Trying to define what counts as faith-based programming is a bit like trying to define what counts as pornography.

Themes of belief, guilt and “foolish grace” abound in O’Connor’s “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” — the third of filmmaker Rian Johnson’s hit Netflix franchise. But few would call it a religious film.

Amanda Seyfried preaches celibacy and endures persecution in “The Testament of Ann Lee,” the musical biopic about the founder of the Shakers sect, in theaters Christmas. But in all the acclaim and Oscar buzz surrounding the film, there’s little talk of its engagement with faith.

Even Scorsese’s 1988 “The Last Temptation of Christ” or filmmaker Paul Schrader’s Oscar-nominated “First Reformed,” which also stars Seyfried, are hardly thought of broadly as Christian films, despite the fact that both men have been outspoken about their respective traditions.

“This film was his way of exploring his faith and exploring who his God is,” Scorsese’s daughter Francesca, who directed one of the episodes of “The Saints,” said of “The Last Temptation of Christ.”

Conversely, the people behind some of these recent projects resist them being called explicitly religious, even when audiences perceive them as such.

“I wouldn’t characterize it so much as overtly Christian,” Jonathan Roumie, who plays Jesus in “The Chosen,” told The Associated Press last year. “It’s a historical drama that centers on Jesus.”

For studios and filmmakers, acknowledging that a project is told from a religious perspective can be a double-edged sword.

“If you’re buying in on going to the movie theater for a faith-based movie, you know you’re gonna have people around you who are really into the experience,” Dergarabedian said. “The minute you say faith-based though, it kind of puts a movie in a box.”

A fad or here to stay

Many Christians celebrate the trend beyond its monetary potential. Phil Wickham, a Grammy-nominated Christian recording artist who voices the character of David in the upcoming Angel film, said it’s been gratifying to see the success of shows like “The Chosen” and “House of David.”

“Growing up, anything that was Christian media felt so preachy,” Wickham said. “Even as a pastor’s kid, it was a turn off. But now I think there’s just more opportunity to tell bigger stories over the course of a series and more people willing to really dig in and tell something with excellence and beauty.”

While it’s too soon to tell whether there’s been a sea change in Hollywood or if it’s a short-term fad, the success of some of these projects has stood out amid an otherwise perilous time in the business.

“Hollywood usually follows money,” Jason Klarman, Fox News Media’s chief digital and marketing officer, said as he touted Fox Nation’s packed slate of upcoming faith-based content, including Zachary Levi’s “David: King of Israel” docudrama. “Even when the trend ends, we’ll still be doing it.”

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Krysta Fauria, The Associated Press