Since abruptly leaving The Daily Wire last year, the site’s co-founder Jeremy Boreing has wasted little time building the next phase of his career.
He’s launched a new media venture and his own podcast, for a start, along with reacquiring his consumer brand Jeremy’s Razors and returning to political and cultural commentary. What’s more, a project he first dreamed of making nearly 30 years ago and spent years bringing to life at The Daily Wire is about to get its biggest stage yet when The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin arrives on Prime Video in the U.S. on Sept. 1.
It’s quite a trajectory for an independently produced Arthurian fantasy series that debuted behind the DailyWire+ paywall earlier this year. Adapted from Stephen R. Lawhead’s novels and set amid the violence and upheaval of post-Roman Britain, the seven-part series—which counts Bonfire Legend founder Dallas Sonnier among its executive producers—has since broken out on Prime Video overseas, reaching No. 1 among fantasy series in the U.K., Ireland, Spain and Portugal.
The ambition behind ‘The Pendragon Cycle’
“My mission in life hasn’t changed just because my circumstances have changed,” Boreing told me about his spate of new projects. “To the extent that I started with The Jeremy Boreing Show, it’s not because I ever had a great ambition to host my own podcast. That was just the first thing available for me to do after leaving The Daily Wire, and I felt it was important to become an object in motion again.
“I’ve been happy to have my political voice back, at a time when the right is fragmented and polarization is so pronounced. But we’re going to make movies, and I’m going to tell stories, because being entrepreneurial and creative is in my core DNA.”
The series, filmed on location in Hungary and Italy with a multinational cast, is also related to another longtime ambition of Boreing’s that he’s laid out for me and others; namely, that conservatives too often criticize pop culture when they could, in fact, be making some of their own.
When I interviewed him back in 2022, Boreing laid out a vision for me that called for pushing The Daily Wire beyond political commentary and pouring resources into original movies, children’s programming and a broader subscription streaming business—a vision that would eventually include the expensive, high-stakes production of The Pendragon Cycle.
Jeremy Boreing
Getty Images for REAGAN Movie
Over time, though, that expansion created a divide between Boreing’s ambitions for the company and its core political commentary business, a difference in priorities that ultimately played a role in the co-founders negotiating his exit.
In that sense, The Pendragon Cycle—which, starting Sept. 1, will have the potential to be seen by a much bigger U.S. audience than it could have behind The Daily Wire’s paywall—sits at a crossroads in Boreing’s career. It’s one of the biggest swings of his Daily Wire tenure, and also the realization of a dream that predates the company by years.
Pendragon is also arriving in the U.S. at a moment when faith-driven entertainment is increasingly proving itself to be anything but niche. Angel Studios, for example, has built a paying Guild of nearly 3 million members and turned theatrical bets like the animated David into a roughly $90 million worldwide hit that later reached No. 1 on Netflix.
Add in The Chosen and its estimated global audience of more than 280 million, and there’s mounting evidence that biblical and values-driven stories can find sizable audiences both in theaters and on streaming.
“When I was in my early 20s, I sat in my little apartment in Panorama City and wrote adaptations of Lawhead’s novels. I didn’t even know what underlying rights were! In retrospect, how fortunate I am that I couldn’t actually secure those rights or make this project back then. It’s so much more relevant now.
“Having seen The Pendragon Cycle find an audience overseas over the last two months has been so gratifying. We believe we made something beautiful and good. We have every intention of continuing to do that in my new venture, and the success of Pendragon will only empower that further.”
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