Our first look at the Genesis-themed The Red Tent

The Red Tent — the adaptation of the Anita Diamant novel that tells the biblical story of Jacob and Joseph from the perspective of Jacob’s wives and daughter Dinah — now has an airdate. Entertainment Weekly reports that the two-part miniseries will be shown on the Lifetime network December 7 and 8.

That’s right in the thick of the Exodus: Gods and Kings rollout (it opens overseas the week before that, and it opens in North America the week after that). And, as it happens, both films will feature Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass as a royal figure of some sort. In Exodus, she plays Bithiah, the Egyptian princess who adopts Moses, while in The Red Tent, she plays Re-Nefer, the queen of Shechem.

Other Bible-movie veterans in The Red Tent include:

• Darwin Shaw (Dinah’s second husband Benia), who played Adam in the prologue that was added to Jesus (1979) in 2003 and Peter in The Bible (2013) and its big-screen spin-off Son of God (click here for my interview with him);
• Stewart Scudamore (King Hamor of Shechem), who played Dinah’s brother Judah in In the Beginning (2000), Simeon in The Nativity Story (2006) and Ramesses in The Bible (2013); he is also currently playing Peter in the upcoming Clavius;
• Sean Teale (Dinah’s first husband Shalem, who is also the son of Hamor and Re-Nefer), who played Young Ramesses in The Bible (2013); and
• Mourad Zaoui (the Guard), who is playing John in the Lumo project.

And while she hasn’t appeared in any Bible movies, per se, Morena Baccarin (Jacob’s wife Rachel) did co-star in Sands of Oblivion (2007), a made-for-TV horror movie that was based on the making of the 1923 version of The Ten Commandments.

And, of course, The Red Tent is being directed by Roger Young, who directed several films for the Lux Vide ‘Bible Collection’ series — including Joseph (1995), which was already one of the very very few films to tell the Dinah part of the Jacob story.

Update: We have more photos, courtesy of the Lifetime network!

Here is Dinah (Rebecca Ferguson) with her father Jacob (Iain Glen):

Here is a higher-res version of the photo at the top of this post, of Dinah with her mother Leah (Minnie Driver) and her aunt/stepmother Rachel (Morena Baccarin):

This is Dinah with her aunt/stepmother Rachel:

These are the sisters Leah and Rachel (possibly with their maidservants Bilhah and Zilpah, though the faces of the other two women are obscured in this shot):

These are the sisters Leah and Rachel again:

This is Jacob’s first wife Leah:

This is Jacob with his second wife Rachel:

This is Jacob:

This is Queen Re-Nefer (Hiam Abbass) with Rachel and a baby (presumably Joseph, since Rachel died when giving birth to her second son Benjamin):

And, finally, this is Jacob’s mother Rebecca (Debra Winger):

October 9 update: I just noticed that there are some more pictures at the movie’s page on the Lifetime website. Here is one of Rachel:

This one has Dinah, Leah and, I’m guessing, one of Jacob’s sons (maybe Joseph?):

This is Jacob kneeling in a river, presumably on his way home to Canaan:

This is Dinah with her mother Leah:

This is Leah:

The next two shots are of Dinah at what seems to be a traumatic point in the story:

And, finally, this is Rachel: