{"id":3246,"date":"2012-07-14T00:26:45","date_gmt":"2012-07-14T06:26:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/?p=3246"},"modified":"2012-07-14T01:00:24","modified_gmt":"2012-07-14T07:00:24","slug":"will-smith-getting-biblical-with-it-maybe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2012\/07\/will-smith-getting-biblical-with-it-maybe.html","title":{"rendered":"Will Smith getting biblical with it&#8230; maybe."},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/227\/2012\/07\/willsmith-a.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/227\/2012\/07\/willsmith-a-205x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"willsmith-a\" width=\"205\" height=\"300\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-3249\"><\/a>There has been so much buzz lately about Darren Aronofsky\u2019s <i>Noah<\/i> and various other biblical projects in the works, that I almost forgot that Will Smith was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.deadline.com\/2010\/07\/now-will-smith-wants-to-play-bad-boy-cain\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">attached<\/a> to star in a movie about Cain a couple years ago. Yesterday, however, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.deadline.com\/2012\/07\/will-smith-eyeing-cain-and-abel-film-as-directing-vehicle\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">Deadline Hollywood<\/a> brought it back to mind by reporting that Smith might not only star in the film, but direct it as well. (If he does, it would mark his feature directorial debut; his only previous turn in the director\u2019s chair, as far as the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0000226\/#director\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">IMDb<\/a> is concerned, was for a 2006 episode of <i>All of Us<\/i>.)<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a twist, though. Two years ago, the movie was called <i>The Legend of Cain<\/i> and it was said that the film would be an \u201cepic re-telling of the Biblical sibling tale, this time with a vampiric twist.\u201d Whether that meant Cain himself was going to be the vampire, or simply someone who battles a lot of vampires (a la Smith\u2019s similarly-named film <i>I Am Legend<\/i>), was never clarified, as far as I can tell.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Now, however, the movie has the working title <i>The Redemption of Cain<\/i>, and\u2026 there is no mention of vampires whatsoever. It is simply described as \u201ca film about battling brothers Cain and Abel\u201d \u2014 though that\u2019s not to say that vampires won\u2019t figure into the story <i>somehow<\/i>, when all is said and done.<\/p>\n<p>Incidentally, this is not the only film with some sort of biblical tie-in on Will Smith\u2019s to-do list. Last year, Paul Tamasy, one of the co-writers behind <i>The Fighter<\/i>, <a href=\"http:\/\/collider.com\/will-smith-joe-job\/78131\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">revealed<\/a> that he and his writing partner Eric Johnson were developing a modernized version of the Book of Job for Smith, called <i>Joe<\/i>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It\u2019s about a man [who is living] the American dream.  He\u2019s got the nice house, white picket fence, great kids, great wife, nice cars.  God and the devil get together every thousand years to bet on a man\u2019s life, and the fate of the world is at stake.<\/p>\n<p>What all of us get hit with in a lifetime, this man gets hit with in one week.  And it\u2019s about whether or not he can still pick himself up from that and survive it.  It\u2019s a dramedy.  At it\u2019s heart, it\u2019s a comedy \u2014 but it\u2019s got, obviously, a real dramatic core to it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And four years ago, Smith <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2008\/09\/will-smiths-last-pharaoh-gets-a-new-writer.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">hired Randall Wallace<\/a> to write <i>The Last Pharaoh<\/i>, a film about the Nubian king-of-Egypt Taharqa, who gets <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2008\/03\/will-smith-wants-to-be-the-last-pharaoh.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">a brief mention<\/a> in the Bible during the Assyrian invasion of Judea.<\/p>\n<p>Whether any of these projects will end up on the screen is an open question, of course. But it\u2019s interesting to see that Smith keeps circling back to this sort of material.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There has been so much buzz lately about Darren Aronofsky\u2019s Noah and various other biblical projects in the works, that I almost forgot that Will Smith was attached to star in a movie about Cain a couple years ago. Yesterday, however, Deadline Hollywood brought it back to mind by reporting that Smith might not only [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[106,105,101,95,99,98,103,94,100,104,97,102,96,93],"class_list":["post-3246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-abel","tag-cain","tag-eric-johnson","tag-i-am-legend","tag-job","tag-joe","tag-last-pharaoh","tag-legend-of-cain","tag-paul-tamasy","tag-randall-wallace","tag-redemption-of-cain","tag-taharqa","tag-vampires","tag-will-smith"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Will Smith getting biblical with it... maybe.<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"There has been so much buzz lately about Darren Aronofsky&#039;s Noah and various other biblical projects in the works, that I almost forgot that Will Smith\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2012\/07\/will-smith-getting-biblical-with-it-maybe.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Will Smith getting biblical with it... maybe.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There has been so much buzz lately about Darren Aronofsky&#039;s Noah and various other biblical projects in the works, that I almost forgot that Will Smith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2012\/07\/will-smith-getting-biblical-with-it-maybe.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"FilmChat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-07-14T06:26:45+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2012-07-14T07:00:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/files\/2012\/07\/willsmith-a-205x300.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Peter T. 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