I'm Warren Smith, and today you'll be listening in on my conversation with Dallas Jenkins.

He's the writer, director, and showrunner for the streaming phenomenon, The Chosen.

I did not feel pressure to succeed.

I felt pressure to make a show that honored God and that lived up to the promise

of Jesus' followers when he was here on earth. And I wanted to do right by them and I wanted to do

right by the story and I wanted to live up to the character and intentions of the Gospels.

But I did not feel any pressure to be successful, and I still

don't. All of this has been a God-driven ride that I'm fortunate to be on, but I don't feel like

I'm responsible for it. And because of that, it takes a lot of the pressure off. Back in 2017,

things were not going so great for Dallas Jenkins.

He'd been making his way as a filmmaker and having some success. But in 2017, he released the resurrection of Gavin Stone, which was billed as a Christian

comedy.

But there's an old saying in the acting profession.

Dying is easy.

Comedy is hard.

And Dallas Jenkins found that with Gavin Stone, comedy was very hard indeed.

The movie bombed.

Today, Dallas Jenkins calls it the biggest failure of his career.

But that failure brought Dallas Jenkins into a time of introspection and refocusing on what he really wanted to do with his career.

Something else happened in 2017.

A new law went into effect that allowed small businesses to crowd fund for private equity projects. Dallas Jenkins took advantage of that new

law to raise more than $10 million to fund the first season of The Chosen, which later debuted to both

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