The Comedy About Moses Heads to Prime Video
The comedy about Moses put together by a The Chosen assistant director leaves YouTube and arrives on Prime Video on November 15.
The Comedy About Moses Heads to Prime Video
The comedy about Moses that gets people laughing is heading to Prime Video. The Promised Land, written by Mitch Hudson, premieres in the United States on November 15, according to RELEVANT Magazine.
Hudson has worked as an assistant director on The Chosen since the first season, in 2018. For four years he carried two jobs: the Bible series and a comedy about Moses that he pieced together on the side, with money from friends and people he recruited between takes.
That comedy will no longer be free. The first season is leaving YouTube, where each episode passed one million views and the series has racked up more than 150 million impressions. Now it shares a date with season six of The Chosen.
«Not everything God uses starts with a budget.»
Shot with what they had
The pilot was filmed in the fall of 2022, right after The Chosen wrapped its third season. Hudson asked to borrow costumes and props from the series' warehouse; the producers set one condition for the tents: return them undamaged and with insurance covering any accident. That's what happened.
The cast came from the same hallway. Wasim No’Mani, who also appears in The Chosen, plays Moses in a mockumentary about taking several million people out of Egypt and leading them on an eternal camping trip through the desert.
Hudson says that during the second season of The Chosen he stopped separating his faith from his creative work. He used to say he would never be a Christian writer. After that shift, a friend's idea about a comedic Moses became a script, and the script became a set.
The joke is never about God
Directing humor about the Bible carries risk, and Hudson knows it. His filter for every joke is one: "The joke is never about the Lord or the idea of faith. It's always about how we people are in those situations" (Sígueme translation).
Dallas Jenkins, creator of The Chosen, gave him another piece of advice on set: meet the faith audience where they are and lead them slowly toward something new. Arriving all at once with something never seen before, he warned, splits people in two: you're either with the idea or you're not.
Humor that portrays our stubbornness leaves God's holiness intact. Scripture says it plainly: "A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones" (Proverbs 17:22, ESV).
Five seasons that depend on you
The second season has already been filmed in Morocco and is nearly ready, though it still has no premiere date. The big plan is five seasons, about 40 episodes and a movie in between, Hudson said.
None of that is signed. The project remains independent: Hudson, a small team and Lionsgate as distributor. He describes it as a show sustained by the people more than by a fundraising campaign. If the audience shows up on Prime Video, even rewatching episodes they've already seen, the machine keeps running.
Hudson even imagined a graphic for social media: Moses holding a box of tissues, ready for the tears that season six of The Chosen brings. His hope is that people watch the heavy episodes and then loosen up with a little laughter.
There's something healthy in that. Work done with what you had, whether borrowed tents, a prop staff or friends who said yes, is also a calling. Not everything God uses starts with a budget.
This week you can do something concrete: watch the first episode with someone who wouldn't go to church, and see if they laugh. Then ask yourself out loud: are you laughing with faith or at faith?
