Dallas Jenkins was ready to walk away.
The movie that was supposed to launch his career had collapsed at the box office. Hollywood backing, strong test screenings and years of ambition had led him to a devastating question: Had he misunderstood God’s calling?
Before “The Chosen,” there was a couch, a crushing disappointment and a filmmaker who had become willing to never make another movie.
“And for the first time in my life, I genuinely was okay if I didn’t make another movie,” Jenkins told Jeremy Boreing during an interview. “If I didn’t make another TV show.”
Boreing remembered speaking with Jenkins during that period and concluding that his friend was finished pursuing filmmaking.
“I wasn’t,” Jenkins confirmed.
Then came a message at 4 a.m.
Years before that turning point, Jenkins had been chasing something he now readily acknowledges: approval.
“I used to practice Academy Award speeches in front of my mirror,” he said.
He wanted to tell stories about his faith, but the Christian filmmaker label made him uncomfortable. He wanted the industry to take him seriously.
“Affirmation was my drug of choice not only in the film industry, but in general,” Jenkins said.
“The Resurrection of Gavin Stone” appeared to deliver the opportunity he had spent years pursuing. Producer Jason Blum had seen a short film Jenkins made for his church and wanted to work with him. Blumhouse, WWE Studios and the Illinois church partnered on the project.
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The film would reach theaters nationwide. Test screenings were strong. More opportunities seemed within reach.
“I finally got the affirmation and legitimacy that I’d been craving for two decades,” Jenkins said.
On opening day, that excitement began unraveling as the first box office numbers arrived.
“It was a total bomb, just a total disaster,” he said.
At home with his wife, Amanda, Jenkins struggled to understand how a project surrounded by seemingly open doors could end this way. He had embraced making films about his faith. He believed God had led him there.
Now he wondered whether his confidence had been misplaced.
“Surely, I must have missed your call,” he recalled thinking.
In the middle of that confusion, Amanda came into the kitchen with an unexpected direction. She felt God was prompting them to read the feeding of the 5,000.
As they worked through the account, Jenkins began considering whether their desperation meant something different from what he had assumed.
“The fact that we’re so desperate and hungry right now and scared, feeling like failures, doesn’t necessarily mean God’s not in it,” he said.
Perhaps, he thought, the box office numbers would turn around.
They did not.
Still searching for answers, Jenkins stayed awake until 4 a.m., writing a 15-page memo dissecting the failure. He examined the strategy, the Christian filmmaker label and everything else he thought might explain what had happened.
As he finished, a Facebook message appeared from an acquaintance he had never met in person.
“Remember, your job is not to feed the 5,000. It’s only to provide the loaves and fish.”
The man was in Romania. He had heard about the movie. He knew nothing of the Scripture passage Jenkins and Amanda had been wrestling with privately.
Jenkins asked why he had sent those particular words.
“Oh, that wasn’t me. God told me to tell you that,” the man answered, according to Jenkins.
The message reached beyond his disappointment over one film. It confronted the way he had approached his entire career.
“But in that moment, my life changed,” Jenkins said.
Looking back, he recognized how deeply his desire for acceptance had shaped his decisions.
“It was all strategy. It was all manipulation. It was all an attempt to be taken seriously,” he said.
He began to understand that offering his abilities to God did not require him to control what happened afterward.
“And I surrendered and I was broken,” Jenkins said.
That surrender left him willing to enter another industry if God directed him there. Yet filmmaking soon took an unexpected turn.
Still working at his church, Jenkins returned to a shelved script about Christ’s birth from the shepherds’ perspective. He had submitted his resignation, but his departure would not take effect until the end of the year.
The short film required four days of filming behind a barn on an Illinois farm.
There, with a far smaller production than the one that had just disappointed him, Jenkins rediscovered his enthusiasm for biblical storytelling. Ideas began forming for a series exploring Jesus’ ministry through the people around Him.
VidAngel saw the short and approached him about developing the show through crowdfunding.
Jenkins expected the fundraising effort to fail. He proceeded anyway.
According to his account, approximately 16,000 supporters eventually contributed $10 million.
“I don’t think that I would have been able to do The Chosen the way that it was done pre-surrender,” he said.
The lesson became part of his company’s name, 5&2 Studios. It also remains a warning against returning to the hunger for recognition that once drove him.
The film’s failure had brought him to the edge of leaving his profession. In that broken place, he finally released his demand to know where obedience would lead.
“I don’t care if I’m successful or not,” Jenkins recalled telling God. “I just want to be where you want me.”
To watch the full interview, click here (editor’s note: mild language).
James Lasher, a seasoned writer and editor at Charisma Media, combines faith and storytelling with a journalism background from Otterbein University and ministry experience in Guatemala and at the LA Dream Center. A Marine Corps and Air Force veteran, he is the author of The Revelation of Jesus: A Common Man’s Commentary and a contributor to Charisma magazine. For interviews and media inquiries, please contact [email protected].
