The Chosen Adventures is a new animated family series installment in popular The Chosen franchise. It premieres this Friday Oct. 17 on Prime Video. Showrunner Ryan Swanson discusses the meaning and emotion behind the program. (This Animation Scoop Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy:  Congratulations on the continued success of all of this, especially the live-action series. Now with this, did it just feel like a next step to go into animation as a companion to the live-action show?

Ryan Swanson: Absolutely not. (laughs) We were gathering up our thoughts after having produced season one. And we were sitting around during production of season two in an Airbnb — Derral Eves and Dallas Jenkins and I were reading feedback from people on comment boards from Facebook and YouTube, and Darrell was seeing this trend. It was kind of mind blowing to us that people were remarking on episode three of season one, which is called “Jesus Loves the Little Children”. It’s an episode about these two kids who wake up, go to their play space and they find Jesus out there camping. Over the course of the episode they get to know him. They start telling their friends, “Come out. This guy’s out there. We’re gonna go build some stuff. He makes toys. He’s a great teacher. He talks to us. He’s super friendly.” And it gave us, as filmmakers at the time, the opportunity for Jesus kind of to turn to the camera with the surrogate audience of these children and tell us that he’s gonna be teaching something different… that he is different.

It was a great exercise, but we didn’t intend for it to be this sort of beacon to families. But as it turned out it started this conversation about, “What’s the show we wished we had had when we were kids?” Something that was funny. More sophisticated — that sort of aged us up. I was a huge “Goonies” fan when I was a kid. I love “Adventure Time” now as an adult. The “LEGO” movies hit for all of us. It took us about four and a half years to bake the idea and to figure out, “How do we not make it too homeworky?” How do we make it funny enough for adults who are watching over their kids’ shoulders to all of a sudden put down what they’re doing and go, “That’s funny.” It took getting a couple Emmy award nominees on board. It took bringing in some really funny writers… and the co-creator “Jimmy Neutron”, Keith Alcorn. We sat down. This thing was not just an easy one-to-one.

Now when we look back, we’re like, “It’s got Chosen DNA.” It has this great core story that’s there for kids. But it’s also got that co-viewing thing with the Greek chorus of Sheep and Pigeon who talk, but the characters can’t hear them obviously. Only the audience can. So yeah, I wanna say it was an easy thing, but it took some thinking and we didn’t take it lightly. We were totally focused on Acts and Moses and Joseph, but this just at a certain point in its development felt undeniable. So we leapt on it.

JM: I was a “Jimmy Neutron” kid as well around that time. And yes, you have Paul Walter Hauser and Yvonne Orji, who are very funny in this as a sheep and pigeon. And I love nine-year-old character Abby’s enthusiasm as she’s learning from Jesus and she’s learning so much. Her friend Joshua is as well. Capturing what the enthusiasm of a kid is — you really got it right.

RS: Thank you, man. We really poured over who for us are relatable characters we wanna root for. When you look at the live-action show, we’ve got a character like Simon Peter, and he just keeps getting it wrong. But he’s enthusiastic. And so we bring that with Abby where sometimes she gets it wrong, and sometimes she behaves badly, but we always treat bad behavior as bad behavior. We encourage her to be curious. Her parents are super loving, and they also encourage it too. And they’re thrilled when she finds a rabbi in Jesus from Nazareth.

JM: He is voiced by Jonathan Roumie, who is Jesus on “The Chosen”, and he played Lonnie Frisbee in “Jesus Revolution”, which is such a good film. Kelsey Grammar is outstanding in that as well. Was it interesting having Jonathan in the voice booth this time delivering lines as Jesus that way?

RS: It was so rewarding, Jackson. Not only to get Jonathan, his professionalism, his talent, his love for the material, but also he gets to show a new side of that character. “The Chosen” is focused on Jesus walking through his ministry on Earth, and these are sort of not written about moments when he gets to imagine what it was like… to teach a kid a lesson? I think getting to see a new side of Jesus, and particularly with Jonathan’s talents, was personally rewarding. It goes beyond what made it to the screen, and everything made it to the screen. But it was also having these moments when Jonathan, who’s so immersed in his character and so burdened to carry the weight of portraying Jesus gets to just kind of riff in the booth. He gets to take a load off, he gets to make a joke and be in on the joke. It was really fun. And he does it all on the live-action show, but to have him in this way and really seeing how easily he does voices, and his comedic timing is impeccable, he was just a great fit.

JM: Fantastic. And one of the other great things about animated shows from when you were younger and when I was younger: the lessons you would get out of each episode. And Abby has a lot of lessons she is told and what she learns about communication and about listening and abou thinking of others. Those lessons that families, especially kids, will get out of each episode are so important.

RS: I think so too. And every episode has a theme… that’s been backed up by scripture. So we are able to, through that format, be a little more explicit about it. But we hope that with Sheep and Pigeon being so funny and so present that it never feels homeworky and that you really don’t even realize that that the episode was focused on teaching us anything. It was just a relatable day in a kid’s life.

JM: “The Chosen” has had such great success going to theaters with some of its episodes as well. Any thought of maybe taking this animated show to theaters at some point?

RS: Anything is possible with “The Chosen”. We started as a garage band, Jackson, and our thought was, “Wow, this is great material that we’re working from… the best ever material. No one’s ever gonna see it, but let’s just go for it.” And that’s the approach that we’ve taken ever since in the writing, and the studio has been nimble and innovative and created personal relationships with our audience. So if they feel like that’s the next best place… The quality of the animation certainly could stand to be blown up and to be enjoyed in that format. And the animators are so talented… The people at Reel FX did such a good job that I think it could stand up on a big screen, and I wouldn’t rule it out.