{"id":4673,"date":"2013-01-14T17:26:54","date_gmt":"2013-01-15T01:26:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/?p=4673"},"modified":"2013-08-19T14:57:34","modified_gmt":"2013-08-19T21:57:34","slug":"new-version-of-ben-hur-to-feature-more-jesus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2013\/01\/new-version-of-ben-hur-to-feature-more-jesus.html","title":{"rendered":"New version of Ben-Hur<\/i> to feature more Jesus?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>Big news for Bible-movie buffs today. Deadline<\/a> reports that the once-moribund MGM, now flush with cash from the billion-dollar successes of Skyfall<\/i> and The Hobbit<\/i>, is thinking of making a new adaptation of Lew Wallace\u2019s 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ<\/i>.<\/p>\n

The film would be based on a script by Keith Clarke, whose only big-screen credit to date is the Peter Weir film The Way Back<\/i> (2010) \u2014 and, according to Deadline, while the new film will of course focus on the rivalry between Judah Ben-Hur and his Roman ex-friend Messala, it will also place greater emphasis on the parallel story of Jesus than the famous Charlton Heston-starring 1959 adaptation did.<\/p>\n

Ironically, Deadline notes that MGM is free to make this new adaptation \u2014 only three years after the most recent adaptation premiered on TV<\/a> \u2014 because the book is now in the public domain. But it wasn\u2019t always like this: The first film to be based on this novel, produced way back in 1907, prompted a copyright-infringement lawsuit that set the precedent for all future film adaptations of written works.<\/p>\n

You can watch some clips from the 1907 film at the end of this blog post<\/a> of mine from five years ago. I also wrote a review of the 1925 and 1959 adaptations of Wallace\u2019s story when they were packaged together in a four-disc DVD set eight years ago; you can read that review, which links to a few other blog posts of mine, here<\/a>. (See also this blog post<\/a> from a few years ago on a visual motif from the 1959 version of Ben-Hur<\/i> that pops up in yet another Roman epic that co-starred Stephen Boyd.)<\/p>\n

The most recent adaptation of Wallace\u2019s novel was the 2010 mini-series I alluded to a couple paragraphs ago. I taped it \u2014 or, rather, got friends to tape it for me \u2014 when it premiered on Canadian television, but I must admit I haven\u2019t watched the entire thing yet. I will have to get around to doing that soon.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, there has been some other interesting news in the world of Greco-Roman films in development lately, but I\u2019ll deal with that in a later post.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Big news for Bible-movie buffs today. Deadline reports that the once-moribund MGM, now flush with cash from the billion-dollar successes of Skyfall and The Hobbit, is thinking of making a new adaptation of Lew Wallace\u2019s 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. The film would be based on a script by Keith Clarke, whose […]<\/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":[411,410,409,362,419,465,345],"class_list":["post-4673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-ben-hur","tag-ben-hur-1907","tag-ben-hur-1925","tag-ben-hur-1959","tag-ben-hur-2010","tag-greco-roman","tag-jesus"],"yoast_head":"\nNew version of Ben-Hur to feature more Jesus?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Big news for Bible-movie buffs today. 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