Tyler Perry Takes Christmas to Church

When Tyler Perry teased this film on X in October, he ran through his own Netflix year — a family reunion, a college road trip, a prison — and landed on the punchline: now he wanted to take everybody to church. The Gospel of Christmas is that trip. Written, directed and produced by Perry, it premieres Wednesday, November 11, and it is his first Christmas movie for Netflix.

Durrell “Tank” Babbs plays Isaac Jefferson, a pastor who inherits his late father’s church in a hard New York neighborhood and moves his family there to save it. The building is headed for foreclosure. His father is gone. His young son has stopped speaking, and in the trailer Isaac says the quiet part out loud: “I prayed for our son to speak, and I also prayed for my father to live. See how my prayers are working out?”

Fantasia Barrino Taylor plays Rebecca, Isaac’s wife — the steadier faith in the marriage, and the anchor he leans on while doubt, temptation and what Netflix’s own synopsis calls a sinister adversary work on him. The film runs an hour and 43 minutes and is rated TV-PG.

It reunites Perry with Barrino Taylor, whose turn in The Color Purple reset her screen career in 2023, and it hands Tank — an R&B singer first — a dramatic lead built around a pulpit instead of a stage. Both were cast to be believed before they sing a note, and both sing plenty.

The congregation is where the film gets loud. Perry cast the pews with the architects of gospel music and gave them characters to play: CeCe Winans is Mrs Johnson. Yolanda Adams plays Gloria. Pastor Shirley Caesar plays May, Hezekiah Walker plays Matthew, and Fred Hammond and Ann Nesby play Abraham and Sarah. The Clark Sisters — Jacky Clark Chisholm, Twinkie Clark, Dorinda Clark and Karen Clark Sheard — play the aunts: Bella, Susan, Pearl and Lynn. Smokie Norful, Jekalyn Carr, Vanessa Bell Armstrong, Le’Andria Johnson, Chanté Moore and John Gray fill out the church.

Read as a music bill, that cast runs from the music’s foundations to the generation carrying it now. Perry’s pitch to Netflix’s Tudum was plainer: “If you know gospel, you know these people.”

The music those people make in the film belongs to Kirk Franklin. Franklin produced the soundtrack, and the choice was personal for Perry — he told Tudum the vision for the film “started with me listening to the songs that inspired me, that got me through some really, really rough times.” It caps a loud week for Franklin, who held the Culture front’s Big Talk seat until this morning. The album is built like the cast: reported as 11 tracks, with Fantasia, Tank and Chanté Moore leading songs in front of a choir, Caesar, Nesby, Karen Clark Sheard and Norful among the voices, and standards like “Mary Did You Know” and “Do You Hear What I Hear” in the mix.

Franklin described the record to VIBE as music that does the story’s emotional lifting: “It’s music that carries the heart of the story. There’s joy, there’s pain, there’s hope, and there’s faith.” His stated hope is that people “connect with these songs long after the credits roll.”

For Barrino Taylor, the film cuts personal in a different direction. She told People it stirred memories of her late grandmother, Apostle Addie Collins — a preacher whose birthday fell on Christmas, and who, in Barrino Taylor’s words, “would lift my spirits with wise and kind words.” Tank’s own framing of the film is shorter: “We always center Christmas around gifts, but we often forget about the gift.”

The Gospel of Christmas is Perry’s third Christmas film, after A Madea Christmas and Finding Joy, and the fullest swing yet in the faith lane he and producer DeVon Franklin partnered with Netflix to build in 2024. Netflix released the trailer on October 16 and followed it on November 6 with a sneak-peek clip of Barrino Taylor singing in front of a red-robed choir. The Gospel of Christmas starts streaming Wednesday, November 11, on Netflix.