Newsbites: The religious connections edition!

1. Kingdom Come, the life-of-Jesus movie that was put on hold in New Zealand a few weeks ago, is reportedly back on track for a start date in late February. There is still no word on who any of the actors might be, but a publicist for the film says a distribution deal has been negotiated with one of the six major Hollywood studios. — Dominion Post

2. Jennifer Beals has joined the cast of The Book of Eli, a post-apocalyptic thriller starring Denzel Washington as a man who must “protect a sacred book that might hold the key to saving humanity.” Beals will play “a blind woman doing anything she can to protect her child.” — Hollywood Reporter

3. The Criterion Collection is releasing Luis Buñuel’s Simon of the Desert (1965) on DVD in two weeks. Based very loosely on the story of Simeon Stylites, a 5th-century saint who spent 37 years on a pillar in the Syrian desert, it is one of at least two Buñuel films, along with The Milky Way (1969), that deal quite explicitly, albeit irreverently, with the history and theology of the church. — Glenn Kenny

4. Joe Eszterhas, the Basic Instinct (1992) and Showgirls (1995) screenwriter who converted to Catholicism several years ago, says he “tried to get a project going” about St. Paul, but no one in Hollywood was interested in it. — Wall Street Journal

5. One of the teams on The Amazing Race 14, which premieres February 15, will consist of Mel White and his son Mike. Mel was a ghost-writer for televangelists like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson before he came out of the closet and became a gay activist in the 1990s; Mike is the writer of films like The School of Rock (2003) and Nacho Libre (2006), and the director of Year of the Dog (2007). — ComingSoon.net

6. Sigourney Weaver is currently starring in a TV-movie called Prayers for Bobby, playing a real-life woman named Mary Griffith, “a devoutly Christian mother who disowns her gay son over his sexuality” but becomes a gay activist herself after her son commits suicide. — Associated Press

7. The release date for Brüno, the follow-up to Sacha Baron Cohen’s previous film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006), has been bumped to July 10. Rumour has it that one of the stunts Cohen plays this time involves “a black model called Jesus who wears a loincloth and a crown of thorns.” — Variety, The Sun