The Chosen will “always” be free — but there may be a big catch

The Chosen has promised there’ll “always” be a free way to watch the show — but with the show’s future distribution evolving, there could be a caveat on the horizon.

Dallas Jenkins’ hit series, chronicling the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, recently concluded Season 4’s successful theatrical run — and the new episodes are returning to cinemas this weekend for Easter.

This is in lieu of the season dropping on streaming, something that’s earned the ire of impatient fans in recent weeks, with some calling its big-screen exclusivity “unfair.”

Its delay has been blamed on “legal issues” (in Jenkins’ notably concise words), believed to be stemming from a dispute between The Chosen LLC and its “former partner” Angel Studios. With the show’s viewership rising, and its profitability speaking for itself, fans may be worried that it’ll stop streaming for free.

This isn’t the case, according to Kyle Young, the show’s executive VP of distribution and marketing. “Part of the promise of The Chosen is that there always be some kind of free component via The Chosen app. So, working through all the things is complex,” he explained.

However, in the same interview, Young also cited the potential of licensing the show and landing a deal with one exclusive platform. “That is something we’re exploring. As we’ve adapted our distribution model, we can see that there’s huge appetite for the show on partner platforms. But a non-exclusive licensed series is not going to get a lot of promotion on the platform, because they don’t own it, and it’s on other people’s platforms. We’ll see where we go,” he explained.

What could that mean? Bear in mind this is purely speculation, but we can look at other streaming agreements for clues. Let’s take Netflix, which has a Pay-One Window deal with Sony; this means the platform gets first access to any new theatrical release once it’s out of cinemas and will have exclusivity for 18 months.

In the case of The Chosen, this could mean the show is licensed to a streaming platform like Netflix, Prime Video, or Peacock first for a specific window, before it comes to the app to stream for free in perpetuity. People will continue to follow the show, but this could open the showrunners to criticism after years of being able to watch it for nothing online.

“Part of the goal at The Chosen is to get the show in front of as many people as possible. It took the first four years of the series to reach 100 million people. And then in the last 15 months, we’ve reached another 100 million people,” Young added.

In the meantime, you can pre-order The Chosen Season 4 on DVD and Blu-ray and find other binge-worthy shows to stream.