Mr. Jenkins said that "The Chosen" was given the right to terminate its 2022 contract with Angel Studios after going through an arbitration process. According to Mr. Jenkins, Angel Studios had breached its contract with "The Chosen," which led the company behind the show to ask for its termination.
Mr. Jenkins corrected the misconception in press reports that "The Chosen" had sued Angel Studios.
He credited Angel Studios with “many of the ideas, initiatives, and extraordinary efforts” that have made “The Chosen” successful, including the crowdfunding model and giving free ways to watch the show.
Mr. Jenkins said the Harmon Brothers—Neal, Jeffrey, Jordan, and Daniel—who own Angel Studios, introduced him to his business partner Derral Eves.
Mr. Eves and Mr. Jenkins “both love them and will always feel a great sense of appreciation for what they did to help bring this show to the world.”
Through tears, he thanked the company and its owners and employees for their “extraordinary efforts” in getting “The Chosen” launched successfully.
“We wanted to solve this in a biblical way, which was to not make it a public spectacle,” he said to explain the use of “private arbitration” by a third party.
“We didn’t come to the decision lightly,” Mr. Jenkins added.
Mr. Jenkins addressed social media comments and speculation about the dispute, which had included some comments about “The Chosen” getting greedy or wanting more fame.
“Please, when it comes to our social media discourse we must be better, and the mind reading, gossip, and accusations about motive must stop,” he admonished his audience. “Both Angel and The Chosen want this show to reach over a billion people and both of us want the show to be sustainable. We just obviously have significant differences of opinion on how to do that and what our future should be.”
"The Chosen" has a stated goal of reaching one billion people through its content, which it hopes to translate into 600 languages. Seven seasons that follow the course of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection through the lens of his disciples’ and followers’ lives are planned.
Season Four of the wildly popular show will be streamed exclusively on The Chosen App for the next month. Two episodes per week will be live-streamed each Sunday at 7 p.m. Eastern time and Thursday at 8:30 p.m., and then available to stream on-demand after that.
The Chosen app is free and is available through Roku, Apple TV, Google TV, and Fire TV, and the new episodes can also be streamed through an internet browser for free at TheChosen.tv after they are released.
The DVD version of Season Four will also be available for purchase, and existing preorders will ship right away as they are available.
All eight episodes of Season Four were released in theaters in February and March in batches of two or three episodes. They earned more than $31 million collectively during that time.
Earlier seasons of the show are now available on Netflix, Peacock, Prime Video, and Hulu, and Jenkins said that “eventually” he expects Season Four to be available on some or all of those streaming platforms as well.