Here are a few new items that came up today.
1. Plans are afoot for a movie about William the Conqueror, the Norman who invaded England and took the crown after winning the Battle of Hastings in 1066. It will be interesting to see whether the film casts its sympathies to one side of that conflict, or manages to sympathize on some level with Normans and Saxons alike. — Variety
2. Plans are afoot for a remake of The Message (1976), the late Moustapha Akkad’s reverent biopic of the Muslim prophet Mohammed:
“We have only the utmost respect for Akkad’s work but technology in cinema has advanced since the 1970s and this latest project will employ modern film techniques in its renewal of the first film’s core messages,” producer Oscar Zoghbi, who worked on the original, said in a statement. . . .
In the original “Message,” the Prophet and his companions were heard speaking off-camera but never directly shown, in accordance with Muslim conventions forbidding their visual depiction.
The new film will be called The Messenger of Peace. No word yet on how it will depict Mohammed’s military exploits. — Reuters, Variety
3. The producers of Angels & Demons, the sequel or prequel to The Da Vinci Code (2006), have released some new photos from that film. The new film revolves around the Vatican and Renaissance art, and the producers promise it will have more action than the earlier film did. — USA Today
4. M. Night Shyamalan has co-written a supernatural thriller called Devil, which will be directed and executive-produced by John and Andrew Dowdle. It will be the first film Shyamalan has written but not directed since Stuart Little (1999). — Hollywood Reporter
5. Alan Mehrez, a producer who has specialized in sequels to Jean-Claude Van Damme movies, now plans to shoot a live-action movie about Aladdin in Egypt, starting in March. The new film will “stay close to the story’s Middle Eastern roots, in which the 11-year-old title character takes on a well intentioned Sultan’s villainous son and saves his family with the help of his genie and its monkey sidekick, Bananas.” — Hollywood Reporter
6. Bill Maher waves aside some of the criticisms that have been made of his film Religulous, which recently crossed the $10 million line to become one of the top nine documentaries of all time. — Patrick Goldstein
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