{"id":54838,"date":"2017-02-15T17:19:40","date_gmt":"2017-02-16T01:19:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/?p=54838"},"modified":"2017-02-15T17:19:40","modified_gmt":"2017-02-16T01:19:40","slug":"newsbites-jesus-movies-past-future-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2017\/02\/newsbites-jesus-movies-past-future-edition.html","title":{"rendered":"Newsbites: The Jesus movies past and future edition!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"benhur2016-5-a\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A few quick items about three recent and upcoming movies about Jesus.<\/p>\n

1.<\/a> Jack Huston, who starred in last year\u2019s remake of Ben-Hur<\/a><\/i>, indicated in a recent interview with Business Insider<\/a><\/i> that the film may have been a critical and commercial flop because too many people interfered with it at the editing stage:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did something very different in that Judah was never a hero,\u201d he said. \u201cI wanted the audience to almost be guessing who was going to win the chariot race. What I found so interesting was we could recreate this amazing character.\u201d <\/p>\n

But the powers-that-be at Paramount didn\u2019t feel the same way. Huston said filming the movie was seamless but that post production was \u201cnot easy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou hire a filmmaker, go with the filmmaker\u2019s vision,\u201d said Huston, who added that he saw numerous version of the movie in post. \u201cThe movie kind of breaks my heart because I know what we did and it\u2019s very hard when there\u2019s a lot of cooks in the kitchen.\u201d . . .<\/p>\n

\u201cI learned so much from \u2018Ben-Hur,\u2019 the whole process was invaluable,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I stand by my performance in it because it was a real choice. I know there was a much better film there that we created, it just got lost.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In related news, Christian Today<\/a><\/i> ran an interview with producer Mark Burnett for the film\u2019s DVD release in the UK last month, but it seems the interview was conducted a lot earlier than that: comments like \u201cI watched yesterday a 15 minute segment of this from the movie, already\u201d suggest that the editing hadn\u2019t been completed yet.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, The Hollywood Reporter<\/a><\/i> says director Timur Bekmambetov\u2019s production company Bazelevs has been struggling at the box office back home in Russia, too.<\/p>\n

2.<\/a> Garth Davis, who is still promoting his Oscar-nominated film Lion<\/a><\/i>, told The Sydney Morning Herald<\/a><\/i> that he\u2019s prepared for there to be some<\/i> controversy around his upcoming Mary Magdalene<\/a><\/i> movie, but he doesn\u2019t expect there to be all that much:<\/p>\n

Davis lives in Melbourne with his wife and three children, aged 12, nine and four. When he arrives home, with Lion<\/i> having taken $16 million in cinemas in 18 days, he will get back to editing Mary Magdalene<\/i>, which he shot in Italy. He says Mary and Jesus will be \u201cvery relatable, very human\u201d in the film.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a film that people are going to connect with as well,\u201d he says. But as the likes of The Last Temptation of Christ<\/i> and The Passion of the Christ<\/i> have shown, there is also the potential for controversy with a Biblical story.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not going to please everybody in this landscape so I\u2019m sure there\u2019s going to be some controversy but it\u2019s not controversial really,\u201d Davis says. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t have the same concerns as the other films before us, put it that way.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Davis\u2019s cinematographer Greig Fraser (who also shot Rogue One<\/a><\/i>) talked to If.com.au<\/a> about the cameras he has used on Davis\u2019s films (including Mary Magdalene<\/i>):<\/p>\n

Did you shoot each on the same camera?<\/b><\/p>\n

No, Lion<\/i> was shot on the ALEXA 35mm. And Rogue<\/i> was shot on the ALEXA 65mm. The 65mm camera wasn\u2019t actually out when we were doing Lion<\/i>. They were in R&D, testing it, and I\u2019d send the guys at ARRI images of some of the locations in India and say, hey guys, if you\u2019ve got a camera, even if it\u2019s just a trial camera, I can make it look great because I\u2019ve got these great locations. Unfortunately it wasn\u2019t feasible at the time. But when Rogue<\/i> started, the cameras had come online and they\u2019d had enough time to test them. Straight after Rogue<\/i>, we did Mary Magdalene<\/i>, which we just wrapped in December. It\u2019s another beautiful drama, and we found much beauty in that 65mm format.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

3.<\/a> Deadline<\/a> reports that a new film adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov\u2019s The Master and Margarita<\/i> is in the works, courtesy of Svetlana Migunova-Dali (who co-chairs the Logos Film Company in Russia) and Grace Loh (president of John Cusack\u2019s New Crime Productions). Bulgakov\u2019s novel \u2014 which alternates between the Devil\u2019s visit to Soviet-era Russia and the events leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus \u2014 has been adapted for film and television many times<\/a> overseas. I wrote about a previous American producer\u2019s attempt to adapt the story way, way back in 2008<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jack Huston comments on the failure of Ben-Hur<\/i>, Garth Davis talks about controversy and Mary Magdalene<\/i>, and a new version of The Master and Margarita<\/i> is in the works.<\/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":[411,2202,3328,4075,4073,2506,345,3355,51,3352,4072,431,3273,4074,1400],"class_list":["post-54838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-ben-hur","tag-ben-hur-2016","tag-garth-davis","tag-grace-loh","tag-greig-fraser","tag-jack-huston","tag-jesus","tag-lion-2016","tag-mark-burnett","tag-mary-magdalene-2017","tag-master-and-margarita","tag-satan","tag-star-wars-rogue-one","tag-svetlana-migunova-dali","tag-timur-bekmambetov"],"yoast_head":"\nNewsbites: The Jesus movies past and future edition!<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Jack Huston comments on the failure of Ben-Hur, Garth Davis talks about controversy and Mary Magdalene, and a new version of The Master and Margarita is in the works.\" \/>\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\/02\/newsbites-jesus-movies-past-future-edition.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Newsbites: The Jesus movies past and future edition!\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Jack Huston comments on the failure of Ben-Hur, Garth Davis talks about controversy and Mary Magdalene, and a new version of The Master and Margarita is in the works.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2017\/02\/newsbites-jesus-movies-past-future-edition.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"FilmChat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-02-16T01:19:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.production.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/files\/2017\/02\/benhur2016-5-a-1024x300.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Peter T. 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