What Hollywood Can Learn from the Success of King of Kings

Here in Hollywood, the big story of the Easter season has been the outsized success of Angel Studios’ The King of Kings. On a reported budget of $18.9 million, the Korean-produced animated film has already grossed $58 million at the domestic box office. Industry analysts accounting for this surprise hit are singing from the same song sheet: The film caters to a neglected, underserved audience with pent-up demand. That’s superficially true, but there are deeper dynamics at play that turn family movies like this into phenomenal hits.

The success of King of Kings did not surprise me; it reminded me of my own experience directing The Star, a Nativity movie produced by Sony Pictures Animation. Since its release in 2017, I hear every Christmas from more and more families who have made watching it a Christmas tradition. It earned $62 million at the global box office, and just this past year it was streamed on Netflix for a total of 23 million hours in the U.S., up from 16 million hours in 2023. Age seems to be making it more popular, not less. I expect King of Kings will benefit from the same dynamic. It attests to a fundamental point: Family audiences are looking for a long-term relationship with their movies.

This contradicts a streaming-era tendency to chase the hottest new IP, which the success of A Minecraft Movie will only intensify. The streaming mindset believes that audiences want something new every week. In effect, this means that each week’s content is designed to be disposable.

But this isn’t how kids enjoy anything, movies or otherwise. If kids like something, they come back for a second helping. This can drive parents crazy if it means that the soundtrack of the home is the hyperactive cackle of a yellow sponge. But this same dynamic is also the key to winning parents over. If parents trust a movie, they’re happy to put it on again and again. This spares them the effort of making sure the movie is family-appropriate every time. It also feels fulfilling if the movie provides real value to the children, especially in the case of faith-based movies. No mother complains when her child asks for thirds of asparagus. If it’s good for your kids, you’re pleased to see them enjoy it repeatedly.

So which films get repeat viewing? My wife just flew cross-country with our infant and our three-year-old daughter. To prepare for the worst, I downloaded nine different movies to the iPad. I needn’t have worried, because our little girl watched The Little Mermaid on a nonstop loop all the way to New York. My wife tried to mix things up, but twenty minutes into Tangled, a small voice asked to “watch Ariel again.”

Animated films are uniquely well-suited for repeat viewing. By its nature, animation is distilled and simplified—removed from everyday life. It elides certain perishable details like the haircuts and fashion of the moment, things like the action hero mullet of the late eighties and early nineties: think Kevin Costner in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon, and Patrick Swayze in, well, anything.

As a result, animation ages slower than live action. Going back all the way to Disney’s 1937 Snow White, many animated films have the same immediacy today that they had at their initial release. It doesn’t seem strange that a three-year-old should be obsessed with The Little Mermaid, even though the film is thirty-six years old and her parents were in the target audience. Meanwhile, you’d be scratching your head if a kid in 2025 built his identity on Surf Ninjas. It’s telling that Disney’s old “vault” strategy of rereleasing legacy titles on anniversary years never included its live action library.

A film stays relevant by becoming part of the rhythms and cycles of family life. A favorite film doesn’t stay on the screen. Children take it home and live it: in their make-believe, in their drawings, in the songs they sing. Kids like to play; a beloved movie provides a playbook. That feedback loop is stronger when the film provides a paradigm for activities that the child experiences in daily life. The annual cycles of Christmas and Easter give The Star and will give King of Kings perennial relevance. What ritual sustains the relevance of The Little Mermaid in our household? Bathtime. Our three-year-old says “I’m a mermaid” as she lies back to soak her hair in the tub; when she gets toweled off, she says, “I turned into a human.” Every bath is an opportunity to become Ariel.

When a film is worthy of a long-term relationship, especially an animated film with relevance to family life, it is poised to activate the most powerful marketing engine known to Hollywood: parents recommending it to each other. Parents aren’t isolated consumers who make decisions based on a vertical relationship with content providers. They live in community. They naturally want to share the good things they discover. The Star’s audience keeps growing not because Sony is advertising it seven years after release, but because families are sharing it with each other. This is also why Minecraft worked: not because it’s novelty IP, but because Minecraft players are a community, and the movie gave them a table to gather around.

As artist Jonathan Pageau frequently says, the best art draws people into participating in society. Indeed, one of the functions of art is to build community. King of Kings became a hit by participating in the communal celebration of the Easter holiday. That community-building power is the reason families will continue to watch it for years to come.