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“People really love to watch it together,� says writer/director/producer Dallas Jenkins. “Seeing a television show on the big screen gives it more impact.�

As the story progresses, the film’s scope gets bigger, he says. “When we first started the show, the story was centered in Capernaum, a small town. Jesus’s ministry was small. And then, as the ministry grew and his impact grew, the story got bigger and so did the show. So that by the time we’re at season five and we’re at Holy Week…the show demands to be seen on the big screen.�

The latest installment, “The Last Supper,� premieres in theaters in March. “We are simply following what the audience is demanding,� Jenkins says. “We’re just trying to catch up.�

The series, which airs on Amazon Prime, is slated to run seven years. It had humble beginnings, however, at a church in Rolling Meadows, Illinois.

Jenkins was producing a film for a Good Friday service and was looking for actors who could tell Jesus’s story from outsiders’ viewpoints. “Jesus wasn’t the main character of the story, and I realized I had seen all the good actors before I cast Jesus. I’m like, ‘I don’t have a Jesus.’�

Jonathan Roumie, who had auditioned to play one of the thieves “was fantastic.� Jenkins asked him to audition for Jesus – who’s only seen in the last five minutes of the story – and 10 seconds into the reading, “I thought he’s perfect for the show. He auditioned for a different role…and the rest is history.�

Now in the fifth season of the movie/television hybrid, Jenkins is changing the face of faith-based productions. “The history of faith-based films and television isn’t a great one,� he says. Largely, that’s because so many producers “were so passionate about the message they didn’t care about good filmmaking.�

Influenced by shows like “The West Wing,� “The Wire� and “Friday Night Lights,� Jenkins wanted to craft “The Chosen� into something that didn’t feel like a church presentation. “It feels like a normal television show about the first century and the most influential man who has ever lived,� he says. “It’s been really cool to see people say that the relationships, the intimacy of the show is what’s bringing them to want to watch so much of it. It feels different from what they expected and, yet, I think that’s also the secret sauce of why the show has grown.�

Fans in China (where it hadn’t been translated yet) told Jenkins they loved the show and couldn’t wait to watch the next episode. “Even though they didn’t understand the words, they were still impacted. It’s reaching people I never thought the show could reach.�

When he got to this season’s part of the story – the Last Supper – Jenkins wanted to make sure it wasn’t too reverential. “I wanted you to see the people come down from the stained glass windows and come out of this painting by DaVinci and remember they were Jewish men eating unleavened bread and honoring Passover and hearing things they didn’t understand. By making it personal, intimate (and) relational, the impact is that much more.�

The Jesus “The Chosen� portrays isn’t necessarily a rock star but someone “who was free of the artifice, free of the presentation, free of the formality and, yes, free of the politics and the religion that sometimes our groups have become,� he says. “It’s very easy for all human beings, regardless of your faith or your political background or your lack thereof, to sometimes accept and receive or reject teachings of Jesus based on what suits you or what’s going to allow you to seed the world through your own prism.�

Jesus, Jenkins adds, wasn’t the “love and peace hippie� some assume, but someone who “spoke truth to power. It was all kinds of people who needed to hear this message. That’s true on both sides of the political aisle.

“Anytime we are starting to use Jesus’s words or the Bible as a weapon to enact our own personal or political viewpoint…is a very wrong instinct.�