Over the last couple of decades, there has been a string of cringy, preachy, and poorly made faith-based movies.
But now Angel Studios, the people behind The Chosen, have come along and brought a high-quality return to form across their film and TV shows.
Their latest movie, The King of Kings, is the first high-budget animated Biblical epic to hit cinemas since 1998’s The Prince of Egypt.
This Easter treat jumps between 19th-century London and the 1st-century Holy Land, boasting an incredible A-list Hollywood cast (Kenneth Branagh, Uma Thurman, Mark Hamill, Pierce Brosnan, Forest Whitaker, Sir Ben Kingsley, and Oscar Isaac).
In a rather eccentric narrative move (which actually works rather well), the film follows Charles Dickens (Branagh) telling his son a bedtime story of Jesus Christ’s birth, life, death and resurrection.
Dickens’ inclusion isn’t that random, as the beloved author wrote a book for his kids called The Life of Our Lord. What follows is a whistle-stop and faithful tour through Christ’s Greatest Hits, featuring all the major miracles and teachings without any on-the-nose preachiness. Isaac’s calm and gentle Jesus leads a band of disciples (with Italian-American accents for some reason) as Herod (Hamill) and Caiaphas (Kingsley) seek to stop the Messiah’s ministry, with the latter bringing him before Pontius Pilate (Brosnan). Meanwhile, Dickens and his son Walter (Roman Griffin Davis) dive through their imaginations into the inspiring and emotional story of the King of Kings.
There’s plenty of fun with a cartoon cat along the way to keep a child’s attention span, while the riches of the greatest story ever told will warm hearts young and old. Beautifully animated, this refreshing take on the Gospels is well worth catching this Easter season, whether one is Christian or otherwise. With Angel Studios’ animated David musical and King Herod movie out later this year and Mel Gibson’s The Resurrection of the Christ shooting in August, we could be on the verge of a new Golden Age of Biblical epics not seen since Old Hollywood.
The King of Kings is out in UK cinemas from April 7, 2025, and free tickets are available here as part of Angel Studios’ Pay It Forward scheme.