By Leah MarieAnn Klett, Assistant Editor Thursday, October 23, 2025

When “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” debuted last year, Dallas Jenkins wasn’t sure how audiences would respond. The 50-year-old director of “The Chosen” had been chasing the project for two decades, long before his groundbreaking series about Jesus made him a household name in faith-based entertainment.

Now, as the Lionsgate film arrives on digital, Blu-ray and DVD, Jenkins says the response has exceeded all expectations. Over the past year, people from “all walks of life, all backgrounds, faith backgrounds or lack thereof,” have reached out to say the same thing: that it feels like a “new Christmas classic.”

“It’s been so heartwarming,” he told The Christian Post. “I chased this movie for 20 years. It is the movie that I had always wanted to make as long as I can remember.”

“You’re like, oh goodness, I’ve been thinking about this for so long … now I actually have to pull it off,” he recalled. “And then you finally get it out there, and you hope people actually watch it.”

Through it all, Jenkins, who has previously opened up about “coming off of a big career failure” before launching “The Chosen,” which turned into a global phenomenon, said he’s not interested in chasing approval. 

“I don’t do projects anymore to avoid criticism or gain praise,” he said. “I really am trying to just please God and my wife with what I do. But when you do something that people are moved by and impacted by, it really reminds you of how fun it is to do this.”

“The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” based on Barbara Robinson’s beloved novel, tells the story of six unruly children, the Herdmans, who crash a small-town church’s annual Nativity play. 

Rated PG, the film stars Judy Greer, Pete Holmes, Molly Belle Wright and Lauren Graham (“Gilmore Girls,” “The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers”). 

By presenting the birth of Christ from the perspective of children “from the wrong side of the tracks,” the film invites audiences, both believers and skeptics, to rediscover the wonder of the Christmas story. 

Jenkins noted that for those who’ve heard it all before, seeing it anew “forces you to answer questions you haven’t had to answer for yourself or others in a long time.” And for newcomers, the story “doesn’t feel like it’s coming from a perspective they can’t relate to.”

“When I was reading it for the first time, I was like, I can’t believe people get away with this in public schools,” he said. “It’s such a Jesus story. It is the explicit Gospel, and yet it doesn’t feel like it’s beating you.”

For Jenkins, the book’s ability to tell the Gospel story through unconventional eyes was what made it irresistible.

“That’s the beauty of the book,” he said. “Barbara Robinson really wrote a genius story that made my job a lot easier.”

He called the project a kind of “Trojan horse”: a funny, family-friendly story that subtly carries a deeper message. “It doesn’t feel any more preachy than any other Christmas classic,” Jenkins said. “And yet, in the midst of it, is this explicit story of Jesus coming to Earth and impacting the world.”

One of the film’s most moving moments comes when the town’s churchgoers are forced to confront their own judgments after the “worst kids in the world” take over their pageant. For Jenkins, that scene hits at the heart of the cultural moment.

“We are in a more tribalistic time than we’ve ever been,” he said. “Once you’re in a particular tribe or group, religious, political, racial, you feel like you’re forced into seeing everyone else as an ‘other.’”

Christians in particular, he stressed, must resist the temptation to equate conviction with exclusion. “We have a tendency as believers … to be so tied to the foundations and truths of our faith that we shut almost everyone else out,” he said. “And that sometimes can become exactly the opposite of what Jesus did.”

The film, he added, “forces the main characters to listen, to consider, and to love the other.” By viewing the Gospel through the eyes of poor, overlooked children, Jenkins said, audiences are reminded that “their poverty and their struggle brings them closer to what Jesus was experiencing and what Jesus was trying to impact when He came to Earth.”

Jenkins has seen firsthand how stories can open hearts, especially during times of crisis. In the wake of 31-year-old conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination last month, he said many viewers have found renewed spiritual hunger.

“What I’ve heard from a lot of people is that in the last few weeks, since the assassination and all the conversations that are happening, people have said, ‘The Chosen,’ in some ways, was tilling the soil for several years,” Jenkins said. “It made people a little bit more open to the Bible, a little bit more open to these conversations.”

Moments of cultural shock, he added, often lead people to reexamine their faith. “Sometimes it takes a cultural event to jolt you out of your stupor,” he said. “A movie, a show, a tragedy, they’re not the thing. The thing is ultimately the Gospel. The thing is ultimately a relationship with Christ.”

Few would dispute Jenkins’ role in reshaping the faith-based film landscape. Since “The Chosen,” starring Jonathan Roumie, premiered in 2017, the series has drawn billions of views, been translated into over 100 languages and inspired a wave of new Christian productions like “House of David” and the forthcoming Fox show “The Faithful.”

Jenkins recently launched a production company, 5&2 Studios, which will include other biblical content, including a children’s series called “The Chosen Adventures,” a series about Moses, a limited series on Joseph and the continuation of “The Chosen” with stories from Acts.

Yet he’s hesitant to take credit.

“I genuinely don’t see myself as the cause of that,” he said. “When I had a career failure eight years ago, God really reminded me and showed me that my job is just to bring five loaves and two fish. The multiplication is up to Him.”

He said that perspective of surrender and brokenness is what ultimately made him usable. "'The Chosen’ is way better than I’m capable of being,” he said. “Which makes it clear that God has had a huge hand in this … [my goal] is to make the best movie I can that honors God and the Gospel … and He does the multiplication.”

Despite its global success, Jenkins said the journey has been anything but easy. He shared how, from the moment that "The Chosen" launched eight years ago, “everything in my family, whether it’s medical crises that we’re facing today … started, more in the last several years than the previous 20 years combined.”

“You’d think that as the show has grown in popularity, things would’ve gotten easier. They haven’t, they’ve gotten more difficult,” he reflected. “Sometimes I say to God, ‘OK, I’m doing work for you. Can we just ease up a little bit?’”

His wife, Amanda, calls their experience “the manna program.” Jenkins explained: “Every day when the Israelites came out for their daily manna, God said to them, 'Don’t store any up. I don’t want you to be comfortable.' I think we’re supposed to be desperate for Him.”

Though he doesn’t “love it all the time,” Jenkins said he believes the hardship has a purpose. “God is allowing it for a reason,” he said. “It produces better fruit. And I think maybe some of the results of ‘The Chosen’ are because of some of this challenge and opposition that we’ve faced.”

As faith-based projects gain mainstream attention and larger budgets, Jenkins emphasized the importance of filmmakers remembering why such projects exist. 

“Our first responsibility, in any field, is to love God and love people,” he said. “If we have an opportunity to make the Gospel more known through what we do, we have to stay surrendered and humble.”

He added, “If I start to feel responsible for all of this, if I start to think I’m the one feeding the 5,000, that would be ridiculous. And I know that God would be more than happy to teach me that lesson again, and it’s usually never fun when He has to.”

Even amid the exhaustion, Jenkins said he remains profoundly grateful and is excited about the future of faith-based programming. 

 “This is the privilege of a lifetime,” he said. “The opportunity to do ‘The Best Christmas Pageant’ Ever, the opportunity to do ‘The Chosen,’ the opportunity to see these movies and shows impact millions of people all over the world … I’ll never stop being grateful for that. It just doesn’t come easy.”