As a child of the 90s, I vivid­ly re­mem­ber the im­pact of an­i­mat­ed mu­si­cals like Dream­works’ The Prince of Egypt. Back in 1998, The Prince of Egypt boast­ed a star-stud­ded ros­ter with tal­ent like for­mer Bat­man and Top Gun star Val Kilmer as Moses, San­dra Bul­lock as Miri­am and Patrick Stew­art of Star Trek and X-Men fame as Pharaoh. To date, no faith-based an­i­mat­ed film has sur­passed the vi­su­al style and mu­si­cal qual­i­ty of The Prince of Egypt, but one new con­tender has come close.

Based on the Bible’s 1st and 2nd books of Samuel, David is the biggest faith-based an­i­mat­ed film in decades. Boast­ing high-bud­get vi­su­als and an all-star cast, in­clud­ing gospel mu­sic stars Phil Wick­ham and Lau­ren Daigle, David is the high­est qual­i­ty faith-based an­i­mat­ed fea­ture film in over 25 years.

King David is the pri­ma­ry au­thor of the book of Psalms, which are 150 hymns tra­di­tion­al­ly set to mu­sic in an­cient Jew­ish wor­ship ser­vices. Nat­u­ral­ly, any movie about King David’s life had to be a mu­si­cal.

An­i­mat­ed by Sun­rise An­i­ma­tion Stu­dios based in Cape Town, South Africa, sev­er­al re­view­ers have praised the vi­su­als as on par with Dream­works and Pixar’s best. Re­view­er Brett Mc­Crack­en, writ­ing for the Gospel Coali­tion.com, stat­ed:

“The an­i­ma­tion is spec­tac­u­lar. Ear­li­er this year, I praised the old-school, two-di­men­sion­al, ’90s-style an­i­ma­tion of an­oth­er 2025 Bible film, Light of the World. But the high­ly de­tailed, al­most pho­to­re­al­is­tic com­put­er an­i­ma­tion in David is next-lev­el good. On sev­er­al oc­ca­sions, I mar­velled at a par­tic­u­lar­ly el­e­gant shot, jar­ring an­gle, or frame com­po­si­tion: David’s re­flec­tion in Go­liath’s sword, for ex­am­ple, or a close-up of Samuel’s anoint­ing oil drip­ping from David’s head down his young cheek.

When Go­liath thun­ders on­to the scene for the first time, it’s as cin­e­mat­ic and icon­ic as you’d hope. My son’s eyes were wide. It’s all epic in scale, “pres­tige” qual­i­ty on par with Pixar. If this is the qual­i­ty we can ex­pect from the Cun­ning­hams’ Sun­rise An­i­ma­tion Stu­dios, I’m ea­ger to see what they do next.”

Sec­u­lar re­view­er Jef­frey Lyles al­so praised David for be­ing high-qual­i­ty, fam­i­ly-friend­ly en­ter­tain­ment.

“David is one of the more in­spi­ra­tional fig­ures in the Bible, which makes him an ide­al sub­ject for an an­i­mat­ed movie re­leased the week­end be­fore Christ­mas. An­gel Stu­dios has been steadi­ly re­leas­ing up­lift­ing, fam­i­ly-friend­ly films in earnest for the last few years, at a time when movie­go­ers could use some hope­ful and en­cour­ag­ing en­ter­tain­ment.

De­spite some gen­tle lib­er­ties tak­en with the source ma­te­r­i­al and a bor­der­line lengthy run time, David is a very en­joy­able an­i­mat­ed out­ing that ac­tu­al­ly should sat­is­fy the en­tire fam­i­ly.”

Faith-based movie David by An­gel Stu­dios re­leased in the­atres in the US on De­cem­ber 19 to rave re­views. It present­ly holds a 98 per cent au­di­ence rat­ing on Rot­ten­Toma­toes.com. David re­leased to in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ences in Nige­ria and Ghana on De­cem­ber 26, 2025, and will re­lease in Pak­istan on Jan­u­ary 2, 2026.

David is a fi­nan­cial suc­cess, with box of­fice rev­enue mak­ing it the high­est-gross­ing faith-based film of all time, sur­pass­ing The Prince of Egypt. David’s fi­nan­cial suc­cess was re­port­ed on Ya­hoo Fi­nance on De­cem­ber 22, 2025: “PRO­VO, Utah, Dec. 22, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- An­gel (NYSE: ANGX), a me­dia and tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny guid­ed by 1.6 mil­lion grass­roots An­gel Guild mem­bers cham­pi­oning val­ues-dri­ven sto­ries, to­day an­nounced that the com­pa­ny’s an­i­mat­ed mu­si­cal David grossed $22 mil­lion at the week­end do­mes­tic box of­fice. This rep­re­sents An­gel’s best the­atri­cal open­ing in the com­pa­ny’s his­to­ry.

In ad­di­tion, David has be­come the high­est-gross­ing faith-based an­i­mat­ed the­atri­cal open­ing of all time, best­ing An­gel’s own The King of Kings ear­li­er this year. An­gel has now re­leased two of the top ten high­est-gross­ing an­i­mat­ed do­mes­tic the­atri­cal re­leas­es in 2025.”

Based on the pre­views of the movie avail­able on YouTube, sev­er­al lib­er­ties were tak­en with the source ma­te­r­i­al. How­ev­er, as the au­thor of a the­ol­o­gy text­book, I have read sev­er­al Rab­bis who have giv­en apoc­ryphal de­tails about David’s life that are not ex­press­ly men­tioned in scrip­ture.

The movie heav­i­ly fea­tures David’s moth­er as a char­ac­ter. David’s moth­er Nitzet is nev­er ex­press­ly men­tioned in the Bible but is named in Jew­ish sources such as the Tal­mud. David’s role in scrip­ture is im­por­tant, but he is not wor­shipped like Je­sus Christ is, so any artis­tic em­bell­ish­ments to the sto­ry are un­like­ly to at­tract ob­jec­tions from re­li­gious au­thor­i­ties.

De­spite the fi­nan­cial suc­cess of the in­ter­na­tion­al de­but, a search on the of­fi­cial web­site and both Movi­eTowne and Caribbean Cin­e­ma’s web­pages re­vealed no lo­cal re­lease date for David in T&T. An­gel Stu­dio’s pre­vi­ous block­buster movie, Sound of Free­dom, had a de­layed re­lease in T&T. Look­ing at Movi­eTowne’s Face­book page, it was re­leased in Sep­tem­ber 2023 af­ter the in­ter­na­tion­al de­but on Ju­ly 4, 2023.

I would like to strong­ly en­cour­age the man­age­ment and staff of Movi­eTowne, Caribbean Cin­e­mas and IMAX to bring David to lo­cal cin­e­mas. T&T’s pop­u­la­tion re­mains high­ly re­li­gious, and David’s Old Tes­ta­ment nar­ra­tive will ap­peal to mem­bers of all faiths who see the book of Psalms as Holy Scrip­ture.