Originally published in Relevant Magazine
For eight years there was always another day of shooting The Chosen on the calendar. Now there isn’t.
The series about the life of Jesus has wrapped filming on its seventh and final season in Midlothian, Texas, finishing a shoot that started in late April. Relevant toured the sets and talked to the cast last week as filming was nearing its end.
Season 7 covers the Resurrection. Season 6, the Crucifixion, starts streaming on Prime Video November 15, and a theatrical version of the Crucifixion arrives March 12 2027.
The show has been filming at Camp Hoblitzelle, a 1 200-acre property south of Dallas, since Season 3, on a set that includes a full replica of Capernaum. Creator Dallas Jenkins moved his family to Midlothian to be close to it. What started as a crowdfunded pilot with no distribution has grown into a series that has reached more than 300 million viewers worldwide.
“When we were on our first day on set, we didn’t know anyone was going to be watching,” Jenkins told reporters. “We had no idea what the future held. We were just a small group of artists trying to make something work. Now, eight years later, we’re still doing that, even though we have a bigger crew, even though we have more toys to play with, even though now there’s hundreds of millions of people watching.”
The Resurrection was the part he’d been nervous about. For the first few seasons, he said, he steered away from the supernatural because it’s “a hard thing to capture and do right” and he wasn’t sure the show had the tools.
“In this season, I’ve had to give up some of that,” he said. “There’s some supernatural things that happen in Season 6 and 7 that have to be captured.”
Asked what eight years of filming the Gospels did to his own faith, Jenkins pointed to one thing: “The thing that has stood out the most is how intimate Jesus was with people. I believe that this show has taught me, and it seems to have engaged viewers in the same way, that Jesus wants a personal relationship with you.”
Jenkins posted a video from the wrap party on Saturday with a caption that reads like someone who just put down a very large backpack: “For the first time, I don’t have another day of filming The Chosen hanging over my head. And one word keeps coming to mind.”
The word is gratitude.
“My eyes are a little teary from the crying I’ve been doing tonight,” he says in the video, standing outside the party after what he counts as 528 days of filming. “But my immense gratitude, that’s the word that just keeps going over and over through my head. And I want to make sure you hear me who I’m most grateful to first. And that’s God, who birthed this project through me. And I’ll never fully understand why he chose me to do it.”
He remembers the morning of the last shoot day. “I woke up and I had so much joy in my heart for the first time in 528 days of filming,” he says. “I just went into the front lawn doing kind of my morning prayer and alone time, and I just kept saying to God, look what you’ve done. Look at what you’ve done.”
He thanks his wife, Amanda, who went through cancer during the run of the show, his kids, the cast and crew, and the viewers who crowdfunded it. “We are not financed by a major studio,” he says. “I can’t thank you enough for that.”
The Chosen is finished filming, but Jenkins isn’t finished with biblical epics. A Joseph of Egypt miniseries the team shot last year is due early next year, a Moses show goes into a writers’ retreat in November and an animated project called Chosen Adventures is underway. He told reporters the Book of Acts is the long-term plan.
“I love this cast and crew, but we’re going to take a little break for a bit,” he said. “We’ll come back hopefully in a few years to do Acts.”
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