Diane Winston

Now, when Dallas Jenkins first had this idea, there was no way he could fund it, so he decided to crowdsource it.

He's raised nearly $100 million for production.

And this covered the initial seasons, but lately he has studios willing to back him because the show has been such a hit.

So obviously, big corporations are seeing there's money in religion and more shows like...

The Chosen, Women of the Bible, House of David.

You know, there's a lot in the Bible you can make stories about.

Yeah, because representations of religion are hard to do.

Even though I said they're more in terms of niche audiences, a lot of times you don't want to go too heavily into a religious character unless they're a biblical character because it could just turn people off.

But it's easier to take the themes that tie religions together.

Religions care about good versus evil.

They care about redemption.

They care about sacrifice.

They care about developing personal ethics.

And so we are seeing a lot of shows like that now.

Think about The Pit.

If you watch The Pit, Dr. Robbie is sort of, he's Jewish in the show, but he's almost Jesus-like because he's long-suffering, he feels everybody's pain, he wants to do good for everybody.

So he's a Jesus-y type character.

Even if you think about Carmi in The Bear, he's grumpier than Dr. Robbie, but he's also bearing the suffering of everybody in that last season when he says he's going to quit so everyone else has better time at the restaurant.

That's sort of a very sacrificial figure.

So those ideas of redemption, of suffering, of salvation often play out in popular culture.