How full-funnel media made a TV show a box office hit

Exverus' Sean Edwards explains the groundbreaking media strategy that earned "The Chosen" over $50MM in revenue in 3 months

It’s red carpet season in Hollywood, and all eyes are on the stars of Hollywood Boulevard premiering their new blockbusters. But could the next box office hit be an indie TV show…set 2,000 years ago? We proved it could!

To sell tickets to the season premiere, indie phenomenon The Chosen engineered a new entertainment model: Instead of movies starting in theaters then going home to streaming, we took an existing TV series and expanded it to movie screens. It was an unusual strategy; we didn’t have a dollar to waste. We had to build major anticipation to make Season 5’s theatrical debut successful.

Sean Edwards of Exverus by Brainlabs explains how we pulled it off at the 2025 ‪MediaPost Data & Programmatic Summit in South Lake Tahoe, California. Watch below!

Full-funnel media finds audiences and drives sales

Entertainment marketing gets a new model

We catapulted awareness and fandom larger than we thought possible! And set a personal box office record in the process…

Non-viewer awareness of the show increased 44%, to a whopping 72% in Season 5! DISQO brand lift studies showed an aided awareness level 4.6x Entertainment category norms. Four-point-six-times.

And most importantly, The Chosen: The Last Supper sold 6.1MM tickets, grossing $50MM in theaters to set a new record and putting the franchise at over $140MM in global lifetime revenue!

After the Times Square takeover, financial contributions to the show spiked significantly

Variety, Yahoo!, IMDb, The Tonight Show w/Jimmy Fallon, The View, and other top-tier outlets featured the iconic strategy.

Our omnichannel media plan reached beyond core audiences while expanding The Chosen as genre-breaking entertainment.

In bypassing major studios and independently bridging the transition from at-home streaming to box-office phenom, we proved The Chosen isn’t just a show – it’s an entirely new business model for the entertainment industry.

---

For more media buying tips, agency news, and case studies, subscribe to our weekly

 Paid Media Insights newsletter.