Angel Studios enlisted the Devil to help promote the third installment of its The Chosen streaming series about the life of Jesus.
Actually, it was only an actor playing the devil, part of a forked-tongue-in-cheek marketing campaign for the free streaming of seasons one and two that drew some attention in the press and created some confusion among show fans.
Also: VidAngel Releases First Season of 'Chosen'
Billboards promoting The Chosen were subsequently defaced, including with the Face of Jesus actor Jonathan Roumie drawn with glasses and a mustache and graffiti with the URL Chosensux.com, which actually led to a less crude web site featuring a video of Satan schooling devils on how to discourage kids from watching the show in an effort to discredit and shut it down (have their mothers recommend it to them, for example). In this version of Hell, the chalk sounds like fingernails and the erasers sound like Nickelback, the Devil explains.
When any devils-in-training suggest they, themselves, might like the show, Satan pulls a lever and they drop through the floor. "There's something below Hell?" One student asks. "The DMV" answers another matter-of-factly.
The Chosen producer Angel Studios tweeted about the campaign April 12: "As you may have heard, these billboards are one part of a larger marketing campaign that launched yesterday. At the beginning of our livestream tonight at 8:30 ET, Dallas will give you the scoop on what's behind it (the devil, really???).
But some fans believed the defacing was real and tweeted their defense of the show and their unhappiness with the defacing of the billboards.
The ad campaign was produced by Harmon Brothers, the agency behind the Squatty Potty and Poo-Pouri campaigns. ■
