Remember Vin Diesel’s plan to make a feature film about the legendary Carthaginian general Hannibal, with all the dialogue in ancient Punic? The Hollywood Reporter (via Reuters) says Diesel still plans to make that movie, but in the meantime, he’s lending his voice to a cartoon about Hannibal for BET Networks:
“I knew that BET would be the perfect place to launch an animated series that celebrates an African mythology and a general that is probably the most notorious general of all time,” Diesel said. “It’s a story that resonates with everyone — it truly is a celebration of a general who is able to bring everyone together with the common cause to essentially fight for freedom.”
The network has ordered six episodes, and is planning to air it in a primetime slot in fall 2007.
“This isn’t a Saturday morning show — we want to be able to show a lot more of the drama and action that you expect to see in primetime,” BET senior vp animation Denys Cowan said.
The reference to “African mythology”, and the fact that the “B” in “BET” stands for “Black”, lead me to wonder how this cartoon will treat Hannibal’s ethnicity. As far as I am aware, Hannibal was Carthaginian, and therefore of Phoenician descent, and therefore basically a Canaanite; and assuming I haven’t got my Hamilcars confused, this Wikipedia entry would seem to indicate that their family may have also been part-Iberian and thus part-Celtic.
Then again, a bit of web-snooping indicates that there was already some controversy over Hannibal’s race when another film was developed not too long ago with Denzel Washington in the lead. And as Richard Poe notes, the ancient Hebrews did link the Canaanites with the African descendants of Noah’s son Ham, and not with their fellow Semites, for whatever that’s worth; even if you don’t take the family trees in Genesis literally, it is still possible that the classification of Canaanites as Hamites and not Semites may have been based on their appearance.
Incidentally, there was a TV-movie called Hannibal earlier this year; in it, the title character was played by the half-British, half-Sudanese Alexander Siddig, of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Kingdom of Heaven and The Nativity Story fame.
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