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<\/a>My interview<\/a> with Cindy Bond, president and COO of Promenade Pictures and one of the producers of the animated version of The Ten Commandments<\/a><\/i>, went up at CT Movies yesterday.<\/span><\/p>\n
My editor, who interviewed her last year<\/a> before the movie came out, added a couple notes in square brackets; and for space reasons, the piece as a whole skews more towards the business side of things than to the creative side of things.<\/p>\n However, as a Bible-movie buff, I had to ask a few more questions about the other films in Promenade\u2019s Epic Stories of the Bible<\/a><\/i> series, starting with Noah\u2019s Ark: The New Beginning<\/i> (alternate title: The Flood<\/i>), and this is what she had to say:<\/p>\n \u2013 \u2013 \u2013<\/p>\n Is Ben Kingsley back as the Narrator, and Elliott Gould as God?<\/b><\/p>\n Bond: Yeah, that\u2019s right.<\/p>\n Is that going to be consistent across all twelve films?<\/b><\/p>\n Bond: I certainly would love it to be. It depends on their availability. But I think I\u2019ve got a real good shot, with that being the case. Sir Ben is just phenomenal to work with, he\u2019s such a pro. He just brings so much to the process, to the movie; his voice just takes you to another place, his voice just has so much depth and he\u2019s so profound. And Elliott, the reason we went with Elliott was because, as opposed to the stereotypical wrathful angry God that everybody wants to portray as the Old Testament God, we wanted to portray a loving God that is infinitely patient with us, but that, when we continually mess up, there are consequences when we cross boundary lines.<\/p>\n It does seem that would be a challenge with the Flood story, because you have a story in which God essentially sends the Flood to kill everyone on the planet.<\/b><\/p>\n Bond: He does, and in our movie, we did direct Elliott in a stronger way. He\u2019s definitely more definite, he\u2019s stronger in terms of his resolution and performance in The Flood<\/i>, versus The Ten Commandments<\/i>.<\/p>\n But you still found a way to keep an element of patience and so forth, as well.<\/b><\/p>\n Bond: Sure, because when you think about it, God had been watching all the corruption and sin unravelling for a very very long time, and then chose Noah and his family to redeem the world, to give us a second chance or a new beginning. So, I mean, y\u2019know, listen, he could\u2019ve just had everybody go down with the boat \u2014 or not had a boat, how\u2019s that? It\u2019s one cruise you wouldn\u2019t want to miss. But no, I mean, listen, it\u2019s good versus evil.<\/p>\n And how is it juggling that aspect of the story with the humour you\u2019ve mentioned? The serious moral thrust of the story with the more entertainment aspect of it?<\/b><\/p>\n Bond: It kind of worked out in a very organic way, in that we set up the first act to establish what we call the evil city, and then Noah, we made Noah a farmer with his sons and his sons\u2019 wives and his wife. . . . And we set it up to where we really lay the foundation for the story, clearly delineating the good versus the evil and how God speaks to Noah and lets him know he\u2019s been chosen and he and his family will be saved, and this is the plan he has in front of him, to build this Ark. He tells him how and things like that. So it does follow along that storyline, but where we take this on another, y\u2019know, into a commercial vein is that we then get into the second act, is when we introduce the talking animals. And these same animals, you\u2019ll see them interspersed inside the first act, but it\u2019s about establishing the setup for the story, and then we take it into a different direction with the talking animals, and the brothers go out and start to round up the animals, and there\u2019s room for a lot of humour there. We have Howie Mandel, who did a great job playing one of the camels; and Miguel Ferrer plays the mayor of the city, a character by the name of Kabos, and he does a phenomenal job, Miguel Ferrer. And so Michael Keaton and he\u2013 That\u2019s Kabos, is the one who\u2013 We actually have the Nephilim<\/a> in there, the giants.<\/p>\n Oh really?<\/b><\/p>\n Bond: Yes we do. Yeah, we went really in there. Yeah, it\u2019s going to be pretty exciting. The kids are going to love it, and the parents are going to love it too. . . .<\/p>\n You got my attention with the Nephilim, for sure.<\/b><\/p>\n Bond: We handled it very carefully. Let\u2019s put it this way. the way our movies are structured is for\u2013 Again, we\u2019re doing this in an entertaining way, but we try to stay as biblically accurate as is possible. Obviously, we take creative license because we\u2019re doing a movie, but what we like to do is be the partner to a youth pastor or a children\u2019s minister so that he can say, \u201cOkay, here\u2019s who these giants are and how they came about.\u201d We can\u2019t get into all the little details because that would just put the movie out for hours and hours and defeat the purpose, so we just basically take the high points of the story and let the details fall in\u2013 to build sermons upon, so that sermons can be built as a bridge between the movies and the ministries.<\/p>\n A number of other Noah\u2019s Ark cartoons<\/a> are in the works right now. There was an Argentinian film recently called El Arca<\/a><\/i>, and Unified Pictures has a CGI cartoon called Noah\u2019s Ark<\/a><\/i> in development right now, and there\u2019s a French studio called Gaumont making Rock the Boat<\/a><\/i>.<\/b><\/p>\n Bond: Yeah, but they\u2019re all after us. We\u2019re before them. Our movie is at least two thirds of the way completed \u2014 our movie will actually be done this August \u2014 so we\u2019re way out in front of them. And also, it\u2019s an English language film, and a couple of those were foreign language.<\/p>\n Yeah, though who knows, they could be redubbed and issued over here.<\/b><\/p>\n Bond: They can, but still, the style is foreign. Because I was in Cannes and I saw some of them, and it\u2019s very different animation than what we\u2019re doing. Ours is CGI, their style is very different from ours, the running times were different, very different types of stories. We\u2019re actally very unique with the concept that we\u2019ve put together, with our talking animals, and it\u2019s definitely fresh, and with all the characters we\u2019ve created, of all these different animals that are a little cartoony \u2014 and that\u2019s another thing, all the characters are a little more cartoon looking. We decided to go that route, as well. Not as realistic looking as Ten Commandments<\/i>, which we just felt\u2013 Again, we\u2019re doing Epic Stories of the Bible<\/i>, twelve pictures, birthing this whole series which is multifaceted. . . . So it\u2019s to be commercial and have these kids watch movies like this, and let\u2019s lay the real foundation in their lives, rather than a foundation of Spider-Man<\/a><\/i> and Batman<\/a><\/i> and Superman<\/a><\/i> being all they know.<\/p>\n \u2013 \u2013 \u2013<\/p>\n During the interview, Bond also mentioned that the producers of this series had settled on the topics for all twelve films \u2014 and after the interview was over, she e-mailed me the list. They are:<\/span><\/p>\n