Things have been a little quiet on the Bible-movie front lately, but when I spoke to The Star producer DeVon Franklin last month, he said he would be announcing something very soon regarding a movie set in the Garden of Eden.
Well, today that announcement came. Deadline reports that Franklin will be producing a new hybrid live-action / CGI musical called The Garden with Fox Family:
The Garden will follow how the first animals and people discover the meaning of friendship, community, and unity in a world that is completely new.
Sounds very uplifting. I wonder how — or if — it will deal with the serpent, the forbidden fruit, the Fall, and so on. I also wonder how it will deal with Adam and Eve’s nudity!
The Garden is based on a pitch by Michael Weiss — who was one of several producers on White Boy Rick along with Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel, the director and co-writers of Noah, which also depicted the Garden of Eden! — and Gregg Ostrin, whose most recent writing credit at the IMDb is a 1999 episode of Xena: Warrior Princess.
Franklin, who first started working in the “faith-based” genre as an executive at Sony, is currently putting the finishing touches on Breakthrough for one of Fox’s other divisions; that film, which tells the true story of a boy who was clinically dead until his mother prayed for him, is due to come to theatres in April, just in time for Easter. When I spoke to Franklin last year, he said The Garden would use the same combination of live-action footage and photorealistic CGI that Disney’s recent remake of The Jungle Book used. (As it happens, the Fox film studio is currently being acquired by Disney. Hmmm.)
I’ll have more to say about Breakthrough soon — and hopefully The Garden, too!
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