Great film and TV projects are sometimes a reinterpretation of a great book. And the most popular book of all time? Well, that’d be the Bible, with billions of copies sold. So perhaps it’s no wonder that biblical stories should continue to find their way to screens.
But that’s happening now in a way we haven’t quite seen before with Amazon Prime’s “House of David.” Some critics have called it the “Game of Thrones” treatment for the biblical character.
It’s just one of the new offerings coming from a studio based, in part, in Texas: Austin’s Wonder Project. CEO Kelly Merryman Hoogstraten stopped by the Texas Standard studio. Listen to the interview in the audio player above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: “House of David” was number the No. 2 most watched show on Prime after its release. For those who haven’t dug in yet, how would you describe it?
Kelly Merryman Hoogstraten: Oh, it’s a 3,000-year-old hero’s journey. And for those of you who are wondering who is King David, he is indeed the David that fought Goliath. And this is actually his origin story.
It’s really when he’s still a shepherd boy before he gets anointed, then during his time of being anointed by Samuel and then rolling up to his moment where he faces Goliath – that is the season finale.
You’ve been in the media industry for about 20 years, holding positions at Netflix and YouTube, among other places. What did you want to do differently at Wonder Project?
This was such an exciting opportunity to get to launch a new independent studio. One of the things that I think about a lot – I’m now a mother of three, and when I sit back and look at programming that I wanna watch with my children, a lot of times that programming is 10, 20, 30 years old. And I would just love more co-viewing programming for me to watch with my kids.
One of the things that I loved growing up in the ’80s was that we actually did watch great shows, whether that was “The Wonder Years” or “Family Ties.” For those of us that were in the ’90s, you know, you think about “Friday Night Lights,” you think about “Gilmore Girls.”
These were great shows that were still gritty. They still had hard issues, and they allowed storytelling to be a community activity that you would watch with your family and then talk about things afterwards.
And I think some of the things that we’ve lost in this amazing move over the last 20 years to streaming is that we oftentimes all watch our own screen with our headphones on. And we don’t see storytelling and watching as a community activity anymore.
And I really wanna come back to that, and my family needs that. And I think Wonder Project is absolutely aiming to tell stories that restore faith and things worth believing in, in a courageous way.
Deadline describes Wonder Project as a “faith-based indie studio.” Is that how you describe it – or is that a little simplistic?
You know, I think about it broader than that. One of the things I think is interesting is oftentimes Hollywood talks about faith as a genre. We actually think about faith as an audience, not a genre. And when you think about it as an audience, my family is looking for all types of genres that have faith and values infused in them, but are actually telling broad stories.
And so when we say restoring faith and things worth believing in, that is God, but that is also country, it’s family, it’s coaches and teachers and it’s entrepreneurs. And so we really think about a much broader scope of programming that we want to reach our audience with.
So why did Austin make sense as a partial home base for Wonder Project?
So one of the things that I think is really important is to be close to your audience. And we think about our audience often as the heartland. And Texas is a great representative of the heartland of folks that I think are strong and courageous and gritty and authentic.
And I just love being here and raising my family here. And I think living here helps me to better reflect what my community is looking for on the big screen.
» GET MORE NEWS FROM AROUND THE STATE: Sign up for Texas Standard’s weekly newsletters
We’ve covered here on the Standard the push for more film and television incentives. How important is that to the future of Wonder Project?
Tax incentives are a key differentiator and a key decision point for any time we’re thinking about where and how we’re going to make a film or a television series.
And so the idea that Texas would be growing its investment in tax incentives is music to my ears. I mean, nothing would make us happier than to be able to produce programming that we love here in Texas.
Well let’s talk a little bit about what else is on the horizon, what we should expect. I saw something with Reba McEntire, maybe?
Yes. So we’re in development on a show with Reba McEntire and Callie Khouri and it’s based on the book “The All-Girl Filling Station[‘s Last Reunion].” So we’re really excited about that. We’re in development right now.
We’re also in development on a story about the Wright brothers, which is such a fun entrepreneurial story. And that relationship between the two brothers is just magic.
And then we are going to be in production shortly with “It’s Not Like That,” which is our new contemporary family drama. We just announced that Scott Foley is coming in as the lead.
We’re working on a really awesome origin story of George Washington. We’re doing that in partnership with Angel Studios.
And then we’re working on a development project with Sony TriStar with Nate Bargatze, which we’re really excited about too.
If you found the reporting above valuable, please consider making a donation to support it here. Your gift helps pay for everything you find on texasstandard.org and KUT.org. Thanks for donating today.
