Martin Scorsese has agreed to spearhead a documentary series about Christian saints for Fox Nation, the subscription streaming service run by Fox News Media.
“Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints,” which begins airing in November, will be hosted, narrated and executive produced by Scorsese, the decorated director of classic films like “Taxi Driver” and “The Wolf of Wall Street.” Fox Nation is set to formally announce the series on Wednesday.
Since its debut in 2018 as a companion service to Fox News, Fox Nation has expanded into entertainment and general-interest programming as it aspires to become a kind of Netflix for conservative audiences. The streaming network already boasts shows with Hollywood stars like Kevin Costner (“Yellowstone: One-Fifty”), Rob Lowe (“Liberty or Death: Boston Tea Party”) and Dan Aykroyd (“History of the World in Six Glasses”).
The Scorsese series, created by Matti Leshem, dramatizes the stories of eight saints, including Joan of Arc, John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene, Francis of Assisi and Thomas Becket.
“I’ve lived with the stories of the saints for most of my life, thinking about their words and actions, imagining the worlds they inhabited, the choices they faced, the examples they set,” Scorsese said in a statement. “These are stories of eight very different men and women, each of them living through vastly different periods of history and struggling to follow the way of love revealed to them and to us by Jesus’ words in the gospels.”
Along with narrating re-enactments of the saints’ stories, Scorsese will also host on-camera discussions with experts. Four episodes will stream on Nov. 16, with the concluding quartet of episodes released in May 2025. The series is directed by Elizabeth Chomko and written by Kent Jones.
Christianity is a frequent preoccupation of Scorsese’s works, at times to the consternation of conservative audiences. His 1988 film, “The Last Temptation of Christ,” was denounced by religious groups for its depiction of Jesus, played by Willem Dafoe, struggling with human urges and frailties and questioning his divinity.
Scorsese, 81, told The Los Angeles Times in January that he has completed a screenplay for a new film about Jesus, based on the book “A Life of Jesus,” by the Japanese writer Shusaku Endo. The director said the film would examine Jesus’s teachings and be mostly set in the present day.
“Right now, ‘religion,’ you say that word and everyone is up in arms because it’s failed in so many ways,” Scorsese told the newspaper. “But that doesn’t mean necessarily that the initial impulse was wrong. Let’s get back. Let’s just think about it. You may reject it. But it might make a difference in how you live your life — even in rejecting it.”
Rick Yorn, Leonardo DiCaprio’s manager and a producer on several of Scorsese’s previous films, is among the executive producers on “The Saints.” Lionsgate Alternative Television is producing.
Scorsese was nominated for the best director prize at this month’s Academy Awards for his film “Killers of the Flower Moon”; he lost to Christopher Nolan of “Oppenheimer.”
