The odyssey of Dallas Jenkins’ ‘The Best Christmas Pageant Ever’ starts in Utah

The year was 1988 and Utah native Darin McDaniel was directing and producing a stage play at the Brickyard Playhouse in Salt Lake City. The theater decided to put on a performance of “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.”

McDaniel hadn’t read the book by Barbara Robinson, but when he did, he was enchanted.

“It was just magical that you could take something like the pageant and open it up to outsiders to experience this,” said McDaniel. So he cozied up to Robinson and chased down the rights for years — until he got them.

Little did he know that after Robinson sold him the rights, a director who hadn’t yet made a name for himself in Hollywood would call him year after year asking to direct the movie. The director was Dallas Jenkins. McDaniel didn’t really pay him much attention — he had offers on the table from major Hollywood studios and was pursuing those instead.

All of that changed in the last few years after McDaniel and his producing partner Chet Thomas watched “The Chosen.”

The end of this story is now clear, as Jenkins’ version of “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” produced by McDaniel and Thomas, was released across the country in theaters this weekend. But it didn’t start out that way.

Jenkins has since opened up about how it was his dream to make this movie. Years ago his wife Amanda came home with Robinson’s book and they read it with their children. It was then Jenkins knew he wanted to direct the movie version of the book, so he spent years chasing the producers down. When they finally said yes, it was an answer to his prayers.

“I can’t believe it sometimes, because for 20 years I have been pursuing the rights,” said Jenkins.

But he also said the movie is no longer his. “This is my ‘five and two,’” he said, referring to “five loaves and two fishes” — the offering he makes to God to do with as He may. “It’s the best that I could do. I love the movie, I’m proud of it, but I’ve handed it to God.”

Jenkins has told the story of the mother of one of the producers of “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” watching “The Chosen,” leading them to agree to allow him to make the movie. But now McDaniel and Thomas are telling their side of the story.

Not their timing

McDaniel and Thomas arrived at the Deseret News’ offices in downtown Salt Lake City bundled up against the cold. On the day they cam in, snow was on the ground in the Park City area where Thomas lives. The night before they were at a screening of “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” with their friends and family, and they were bursting with excitement because their decades-long effort was finally bearing fruit.

“We’ve wanted it on our timing,” said Thomas. “God has had it on his timing.”

“Thank heavens!” exclaimed McDaniel, saying if the movie had worked out sooner, he didn’t think it would have turned out the way it did.

From 1988 to now, the movie was almost made multiple times, said McDaniel.

McDaniel said he was drawn to the book because it has “this palette that is so broad, that is way beyond the Christian market.” Between how the Herdman kids were rascals, the Americana setting and the way the book reveals what the Herdman kids have through, McDaniel thought it was something special.

“The play sold out every night and then I started chasing the rights immediately,” said McDaniel, referencing the 1988 Salt Lake City staging of the play. He built a relationship with Robinson and finally in 2001, he said he secured the rights.

As soon as the rights were his, he started looking for a partner to help him produce the movie. He wanted to work with Gerald Molen (“Schlinder’s List,” “Jurassic Park” and “The Meg”), but couldn’t get in touch with him. At least not until he was driving from Los Angeles to Utah and remembered Molen was living in Las Vegas.

McDaniel used the directory to find Molen’s phone number and called him at home. Not long after, McDaniel, Thomas and Molen were collaborating on the film. Robinson was still alive at the time and they would get feedback from her during the process.

The group decided to make the movie with Walden Media, feeling like it was the “perfect partnership.” Walden had made movies like “Chronicles of Narnia,” so it seemed like a good fit. Variety reported Walden acquired the feature rights in 2010 and by 2012, had attached a director: Andy Fickman.

You might know Fickman as the director of “She’s the Man,” “The Game Plan, “Race to Witch Mountain” and “Young Again.”

As the development process went on, McDaniel and Thomas said it inched away from the book and became more commercial. “We’re getting the movie made, so we kind of convinced ourselves that this is the right direction,” said Thomas. There was the allure of big name actors, too, that kept them thinking they were headed in the right direction.

But the movie just didn’t get made — the reason changing year after year. Then the coronavirus pandemic happened.

“In all the craziness, Walden forgot to renew the option,” said Thomas. At that point, McDaniel and Thomas said they felt like they were off track and wanted to go in a different direction. So, they went through their rolodexes of Hollywood contacts and got deals on the table — including with one of the biggest names in the business.

The crossroads

They were ready to sign the deal. But Thomas said the direction they were headed in felt like they were taking Christ out of the movie. And they didn’t want to do that.

Both McDaniel and Thomas said they are believers — and ultimately, they decided, they wanted to keep intact the Christian theme at the heart of the book. It was more important, they decided, than commercialism.

While they were negotiating deals and figuring out which direction they wanted to go in with the movie, Jenkins had been calling at least once a year for more than 10 years, Thomas said. Recalling the first call they got, Thomas said Jenkins told them he wanted to direct it and he loved it more than life itself. For many years, they didn’t think bringing him on the project was the right decision.

But around the time the option wasn’t renewed, McDaniel and Thomas said Jenkins’ star was rising because of his work on “The Chosen.” People were “binging Jesus” (as the show puts it) during the pandemic. That’s when they started to think differently. McDaniel was the one whose mom told him to watch the show — “I just found myself crying multiple times.”

McDaniel said he knew Jenkins was onto something because of the way he made the characters seem like real people. Thomas said the same and also noticed how loyal Jenkins’ following was.

“Why don’t we do the risky thing and let’s get Dallas on board, because he’s got ‘The Chosen’ following,” said Thomas, adding they thought about raising the financing themselves. They were having some trouble making the pitch to studios.

So, they had a choice to make — do they go with a big studio, but not Jenkins? Or do they take a chance on Jenkins and keep shopping around? McDaniel and Thomas felt like the right decision was to go with Jenkins.

At the time they made the decision, McDaniel said they knew it might mean they had a lower budget to make the movie, but they wanted Jenkins.

McDaniel said Jenkins’ real talent is in adapting characters in unique ways. He pointed toward a scene in “The Chosen” when Jesus is going up to give the Sermon on the Mount. “That music kicks in, I’m like that is the coolest thing ever. It was like a Quentin Tarantino moment,” he said.

Thomas and McDaniel decided Jenkins could do the same with “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.” When they told him, Jenkins was excited. And they joked that he could finally remove his calendar reminders to pray to direct the film and to call them about it.

Then, the partnership between Lionsgate and Kingdom Story Company opened up an opportunity. “It was a real hybrid,” said Thomas, adding he thought Lionsgate and Jenkins had a true partnership.

Most importantly to McDaniel and Thomas, they thought Jenkins honored the book and exceeded their expectations and visions for the movie.

Beyond what Jenkins did, they said the whole team — including costume designer Maria Livingstone, production designer Jean-Andre Carriere, the whole cast and crew, and especially the actors that played the children — were the right people to make the movie what it was.

Different goals now

It would be nice if the movie got a hundred-million-dollar box office, said Thomas. But he’s defining success a little differently now. He read a text message from a friend saying, “My wife and I were both in tears. Me more so because I could relate so much to Imogene and her siblings. That was me and my family before I found God at the age of 17.”

His friend related to the movie because he wanted to be more than who he thought he was and “held onto the message that I was a son of God.”

This and other reactions have influenced Thomas to change the way he sees the outcome of this movie.

He also hopes Utahns will be proud of the movie and their connection to it. And Robinson, the author, as well. She died in 2013, but her daughter visited the set.

McDaniel said he’s 61 and he feels like he’s just starting into the most exciting decade of his life because of the movie and what’s coming next. The movie has made him into someone better than he was before, he said.

It’s not lost on either of them that they were talking like Jenkins had during his speech at Brigham Young University the same week.

“Five and two” is Jenkins’ shorthand for saying he brings five loaves and two fishes (usually in the form of TV shows or now this movie) and gives it to God. Hearing him speak about that at BYU resonated with both McDaniel and Thomas. They thought they learned similar lessons to him about caring less about the box-office numbers.

Maybe the movie took so long to make, said Thomas, because they needed to learn those lessons.

“All the way to the end, 20 years later, this has been the forging process of us and who we are,” said Thomas. “And if we’d done it overnight, we’d have been lost souls in Hollywood.”