The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that the Jerusalem Film Fund, which supports films and TV shows that take place within Israel’s capital city, has given some money to an animated film called Being Solomon, which is described as “a Hungarian-British-Israeli production that imagines the biblical King Solomon joining forces with the Queen of Sheba and an Arab queen, Na’ama, to fight the king of demons, who is seeking to take over their kingdoms.”
Horror filmmakers such as Marcus Nispel and Alexandre Aja have talked in the past about making movies in which someone clones Jesus from the DNA in his blood, but as far as I can tell, those projects never got off the ground. Writer-director Leone Marucci, on the other hand, has a film on this very topic coming out next month, starring Christopher Walken, Christian Slater, Larry King and that girl who played Pocahontas in The New World. The film in question — which frankly doesn’t look all that good — is called The Power of Few and seems to follow several parallel storylines; the stealing of the Shroud of Turin, and the possible extraction of DNA from the bloodstains thereon, might not be all that big a part of the movie as a whole, but the trailer certainly emphasizes those elements.
I may have written my post on possible upcoming Greco-Roman movies too soon. Today, MGM (the studio that is currently pondering a remake of Ben-Hur) and Paramount (the studio that is currently making Noah — which admittedly has nothing to do with Greece or Rome, but it does take place within a similar sort of ancient mythic context) announced that their adaptation of Steve Moore’s Hercules comics will come out next year. The film, which has been in development for at least five years, currently has Brett Ratner attached to direct and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson attached to star. The projected release date is August 8, 2014 — or less than five months after the release of Noah.
The big news yesterday was that MGM is thinking of making yet another film version of Ben-Hur — and that was just one week after it was reported that Brad Pitt was thinking of starring in a movie called Pontius Pilate. But there have been a few other reports over the last few days about films in development with a Greco-Roman theme.
First, last Wednesday, the Hollywood Reporter said Ang Lee, the Oscar-winning director of Brokeback Mountain and Life of Pi, was interested in directing the Cleopatra movie that Angelina Jolie has been attached to for the past couple years.
Big news for Bible-movie buffs today. Deadline reports that the once-moribund MGM, now flush with cash from the billion-dollar successes of Skyfall and The Hobbit, is thinking of making a new adaptation of Lew Wallace’s 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ.
The film would be based on a script by Keith Clarke, whose only big-screen credit to date is the Peter Weir film The Way Back (2010) — and, according to Deadline, while the new film will of course focus on the rivalry between Judah Ben-Hur and his Roman ex-friend Messala, it will also place greater emphasis on the parallel story of Jesus than the famous Charlton Heston-starring 1959 adaptation did.
We already knew that Universal was prepping a 3D re-release of the original Jurassic Park (1993) for this coming April — two months before the film’s 20th anniversary. And we already knew that Universal had hired Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, the writers of Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), to come up with a brand new Jurassic Park sequel.
But it wasn’t until today that Universal committed to an actual release date for the new film — and it isn’t that far away: June 13, 2014, or less than a year and a half from now. That’s somewhat ambitious, for an effects-driven film that currently has no director or cast attached.
My friend Darrel Manson reminds me that the National Film Registry announced a few weeks ago that it will add another 25 films to its archives — and that one of the films chosen for preservation this time ’round is the 1964 short film Parable, which featured a clown as a sort of Christ-figure nearly a decade before Godspell (1973).
The National Film Registry indicates that it chose the film partly because it represents a much larger and older tradition of Protestant non-theatrical films, and partly because this particular film, which was produced for the New York World’s Fair, was somewhat controversial and thus historically significant. Here is the Registry’s blurb on the film:
[Read more...]
I haven’t done this in a few years, but I did devote posts to this subject in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009 — so I might as well whip one up for 2012, as well.
First, a recap:
2005 marked the first time since 1996 that the Best Picture winner did not gross at least $100 million, the first time since 1985 that not one of the Best Picture nominees grossed at least $100 million, and the first time in living memory that the Best Picture winner was not one of the Top 25 grossing films of its year. In fact, the winner that year — Crash — grossed a mere $54.6 million and ranked way, way down at #49.
Ever since then, the Oscar for Best Picture has alternated between relatively big hits and somewhat smaller box-office performers.
The Academy has spoken, and it looks like Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln will be the big winner when the final envelopes are opened on February 24.
All the usual indicators point in that direction, at any rate. It has the most nominations. It is one of only two Best Picture nominees whose directors were also nominated for the Directors Guild Award (the other such film being Ang Lee’s Life of Pi). It was nominated for Best Film Editing. And, perhaps just as importantly, it is a box-office hit in a year when the Oscar will probably go to a box-office hit. (More on that in a later post.)
The Jewish Journal reports that writer-director Jonathan Kesselman is looking at making a sequel to The Hebrew Hammer, the 2003 “Jewsploitation” flick that starred Adam Goldberg as an Orthodox private detective who saves Hanukkah from the evil son of Santa Claus.
In the new film, that detective, whose name is Mordechai Jefferson Carver, would have to deal with a time-traveling Adolf Hitler — and since the movie’s characters will be jumping around from era to era, the film will feature characters from the Bible, too.
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