Christian producers Mark Burnett and Roma Downey struck gold with their television series "The Bible." Unfortunately, its sequel "A.D. The Bible Continues" did not attain the same level of success as the first show, prompting NBC Network to cancel the show.
The show's ratings started out strong, with its first episode reeling in nearly 10 million viewers in April this year. Sadly, the ratings steadily dropped for the succeeding episodes, and when the final episode rolled out in June, only 3.5 million viewers tuned in to watch.
However, Burnett and Downey still have big plans that just might reinvigorate the story of "A.D. The Bible Continues." According to Variety, the power couple is planning to create an online channel for faith-based programming and use the series to launch it.
The online channel hopes to be up and running by 2016 or 2017. The actors who played roles in "A.D. The Bible Continues" have already been released from their contractual obligations and are now free to sign up for other roles and projects. Should Burnett and Downey plan on extending the show for another season, they might be forced to recruit new actors.
"A.D. The Bible Continues" starred Juan Pablo Di Pace as Jesus. Its culturally diverse cast includes Richard Coyle, James Callis, Babou Alieu Ceesay, Chipo Chung, and Adam Levy.
Burnett and Downey have said that creating faith-based films and shows is no easy feat since they have to be "authentic" and stay pretty true to the Bible.
"When you're dealing with Jesus in a screenplay, it's not really the time for improvising," said Downey.
They also back up every project with prayer and careful reflection, since "the kind of projects that we would be looking for happen to be things that inspire or uplift or elevate," she added.
