Various sites, including Deadline and Variety, are reporting that veteran TV director Christopher Menaul has been tapped to oversee the upcoming adaptation of Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Jesus for the National Geographic Channel. Ridley Scott is one of several producers attached to the project.
Menaul has worked almost exclusively in television, so I am unfamiliar with his work — though I do recall attending a press screening of Feast of July back in the mid-’90s. In any case, he does not seem to have worked in the Bible-movie genre before.
In March, the adaptation, written by Law & Order veteran Walon Green, was described as a four-hour miniseries. Now they’re calling it a “three-hour telepic”. Does that mean the whole thing will air on a single night?
The plan right now is to shoot the film this fall and air it sometime next year.
Other Bible-themed (or first-century-Judea-themed) TV productions currently in the works include A.D. (NBC, premieres April 5), The Dovekeepers (CBS), Nazareth (Fox), The One (Lifetime) and The Red Tent (Lifetime).
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