Martin Sheen replaces Robert Redford as Oral Roberts<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Come Sunday will also star Chiwetel Ejiofor as Carlton Pearson, a Pentecostal minister who was deemed a heretic for saying he didn't believe in Hell.\" \/>\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\/2017\/01\/martin-sheen-replaces-robert-redford-oral-roberts.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Martin Sheen replaces Robert Redford as Oral Roberts\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Come Sunday will also star Chiwetel Ejiofor as Carlton Pearson, a Pentecostal minister who was deemed a heretic for saying he didn't believe in Hell.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2017\/01\/martin-sheen-replaces-robert-redford-oral-roberts.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"FilmChat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-01-06T06:49:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.production.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/files\/2017\/01\/vessel-1024x403.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Peter T. 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{"id":54620,"date":"2017-01-05T22:49:48","date_gmt":"2017-01-06T06:49:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/?p=54620"},"modified":"2017-01-05T22:49:48","modified_gmt":"2017-01-06T06:49:48","slug":"martin-sheen-replaces-robert-redford-oral-roberts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2017\/01\/martin-sheen-replaces-robert-redford-oral-roberts.html","title":{"rendered":"Martin Sheen replaces Robert Redford as Oral Roberts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

$\"vessel\"$ <\/a><\/p>\n

Three years ago<\/a>, I passed along a news item to the effect that Robert Redford was in talks to play televangelist Oral Roberts in a movie called Come Sunday<\/a><\/i>. Today, Deadline<\/a> reports that the part will go to Martin Sheen instead \u2014 and that\u2019s not the only thing that has changed about the film since the last time I blogged it.<\/p>\n

Back then, the film was going to be directed by Jonathan Demme, and it was going to star Jeffrey Wright as Carlton Pearson<\/a>, a Pentecostal<\/a> minister who was a rising star within his denomination until he revealed that he no longer believed in Hell \u2014 a decision that forced Roberts, his mentor, to turn against him. Now the film is being directed by Joshua Marston (Maria Full of Grace<\/i>), and Pearson will be played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, who just finished playing Peter in Mary Magdalene<\/a><\/i>.<\/p>\n

The script for Come Sunday<\/i> is by Marcus Hinchey (All Good Things<\/i>) and is based on an episode of This American Life<\/i> \u2014 archived here<\/a> \u2014 that first aired in 2005.<\/p>\n

To my knowledge, Oral Roberts has never been played by an actor in a movie before \u2014 though actors have played other<\/i> real-life televangelists. Kevin Spacey and Bernadette Peters played Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker in Fall from Grace<\/i>, a 1990 TV-movie. Richard Paul played Jerry Falwell in that film and then reprised the role in 1996\u2019s The People vs. Larry Flynt<\/i>. Alec Baldwin played Jimmy Swaggart pre-television in the 1989 movie Great Balls of Fire!<\/i> And if you count Billy Graham as a \u201ctelevangelist\u201d (he may not have had a daily talk show, but he did produce a regular series of TV specials), there was an entire biopic<\/a> devoted to his early years in 2008. (He was also depicted in at least one satire of the Nixon administration<\/a> in the early 1970s.)<\/p>\n

Oral Roberts and the Bakkers (and others?) are also slated to appear in a biopic of comedian Sam Kinison<\/a> that has been in the works for the past several years.<\/p>\n

The question of whether Hell exists has been debated increasingly in the decade or so since Pearson was formally declared a heretic by the Joint College of African-American Pentecostal Bishops. Rob Bell had a falling out with his own church and was rejected by some evangelicals after he expressed his own openness to universal reconciliation in the book Love Wins<\/i> in 2011. And my fellow Patheos blogger Kevin Miller<\/a> stirred things up with his documentary Hellbound?<\/a><\/i> in 2012.<\/p>\n

So expect the debate to continue if Come Sunday<\/i> does, in fact, get made.<\/p>\n

\u2014 The image above shows Martin Sheen playing a priest in last year\u2019s <\/i>The Vessel.<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"