Hey, it's Payton. 👋
Whatever you think about The Chosen’s historical accuracy, building a global Jesus series outside the studio system is a remarkable feat. It’s also become one of my favorite tools for discipling a young couple at our church.
It’s become a “ddduuuuddde, have you seen this episode?!” kind of tool for me.
That word-of-mouth was the whole business model, and it started with the strangest pitch in television history.
In 2019, Dallas Jenkins needed $11 million for a Jesus series no network wanted, so he passed the offering plate to the internet. More than 16,000 people invested, some putting in as little as $100, and became legal co-owners of a show that didn't exist yet.
These were real shareholders with real equity.
Exhibit A: the actual offering page. $1,069,962 from 2,480 people, and the meter nearly full (VidAngel Studios, via the Wayback Machine)
The pitch made them part of the story. This is OUR show; we're taking the greatest story ever told to the world, and you own a piece of the vehicle.
It worked beyond anyone's math.
By the series' own count, more than 300 million people have watched it. Its theatrical releases have cleared $140 million, and the Last Supper episodes became the highest-grossing releases in Fathom Events history. This November, Season 6 premieres exclusively on Prime Video, with the crucifixion headed to global theaters as an Amazon MGM film next spring.
Then came the ending those original investors never signed up for.
In June, an early investor filed a class-action lawsuit against 5&2 Studios (the production company, named for the loaves and the fish) alleging it forced all 16,000+ original shareholders to sell.
The story broke nationally this month.
The complaint reads like a screenplay. It says the buyout vote landed the day after Palm Sunday, when roughly 80% of the famously devout small shareholders didn't vote.
The complaint says everyone holding fewer than 173,750 shares was cashed out at $3.75 a share, priced off a $52.9 million valuation when earlier projections had implied closer to $150 million.
The complaint also says the lead plaintiff offered to buy more stock at a premium just to stay in. The offer went nowhere. Meanwhile, the nonprofit that keeps the show free for viewers loaned $24.7 million to finance the buyout.
The sharpest line turns the company's own name against it: the deal, it says, "turned the Feeding of the Five Thousand on its head."
Exhibit B: the new ending, coming November 15 (Prime Video)
I'm not the judge, and the studio's side has weight.
Being an SEC-reporting company with 16,000 shareholders cost 5&2 about $3.7 million a year, and an Amazon-sized deal wants a clean cap table. Sixteen thousand tiny owners make a beautiful origin story and a brutal spreadsheet.
The cashed-out investors did profit: the lead plaintiff received about $560,000 for his $300,000 investment.
Jenkins is on the record plainly: "Any suggestion of impropriety is categorically false, and the full record thoroughly addresses every concern." The studio files its motion to dismiss by the end of August, and a court will sort out who's right.
But look at what the lawsuit is made of. Every beat of the complaint is a story beat: we built this when nobody else would, and the ending got rewritten without us in the room.
What's happening underneath it
The Chosen's origin pitch made a promise, and promises in stories are load-bearing. Writers call this promise and payoff: your opening tells the audience what kind of ending they've bought, and an ending that breaks the promise doesn't read as a twist.
It reads as a betrayal.
"You own a piece of this" is about the strongest promise a creator can make. It recruited 16,000 evangelists who marketed the show for free for seven years, and that same promise is now the entire emotional engine of the suit against it.
Exhibit C: the promise, in writing. "Then you share in profits with us." (VidAngel Studios offering page, 2020)
Scripture gives enormous weight to covenants because the terms, witnesses, and obligations are named out loud. A crowdfunding agreement isn't a biblical covenant, but the principle still presses on this story: decide what faithfulness looks like before success makes the terms inconvenient.
That's the trapdoor.
Verdict: 🟡 Adapt it
Deputizing your audience is still one of the most powerful growth engines a creator can run, and The Chosen shows how far it can travel. Just author the last chapter on day one.
The move:
Before you invite your audience into anything (a founding-member tier, a launch team, a crowdfunded launch), write one plain paragraph answering: what happens to these people if this thing wins big? Publish it where they sign up. Write it before the confetti, not during cleanup.
Put your first believers' names somewhere permanent (a founders page, the credits, your welcome email). Equity can change hands in a buyout. A name in the credits stays.
If you ever have to change a deal with early supporters, tell them before the lawyers do. A hard update email costs you a weekend. The alternative is much harder to repair.
🗂️ Open the case file: WORLD's "Cashing out the 16,000" is the fullest account I've found of how the buyout actually worked.
Bottom line
The Chosen taught every creator how to start a story with their audience. It's now teaching us how not to end one.
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Until next time,
—Payton ✌️
