{"id":71525,"date":"2021-12-10T11:30:23","date_gmt":"2021-12-10T19:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/?p=71525"},"modified":"2021-12-10T11:30:23","modified_gmt":"2021-12-10T19:30:23","slug":"saudi-arabian-studio-making-a-movie-about-noahs-ark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2021\/12\/saudi-arabian-studio-making-a-movie-about-noahs-ark.html","title":{"rendered":"Saudi Arabian studio making a movie about Noah’s Ark"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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

The Saudi Arabian movie industry is heating up, and now comes word that a studio owned by the Saudi government is developing a film about the discovery of Noah\u2019s Ark.<\/p>\n

Variety<\/a><\/i> reports:<\/p>\n

Zeinab Abu Alsamh, who is general manager of MBC Studios in Saudi, said she has roughly 20 projects \u2014 both TV and film \u2014 in various stages and is looking to greenlight at least some of them for production within the next 18 months.<\/p>\n

MBC is at the forefront of the current Saudi media industry boom, which is being accelerated by the growth in subscribers to its Shahid VIP streaming platform. The service recently reached the two million customers milestone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And here is how Variety<\/i> describes the Noah project specifically:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Ark\u201d<\/b> \u2014 This is a tentpole film in development with a budget of roughly $100 million and plans to shoot in NEOM, Saudi\u2019s futuristic city-in-the-making on the edge of the Red Sea. The story involves what is believed to be the remains of Noah\u2019s ark suddenly surfacing on the shores of NEOM due to climate change, which creates a huge media frenzy and the arrival of swarms of archeologists. \u201cYou have this very futuristic city, and then this archaic ark is found there,\u201d said Alsamh. \u201cSo these two worlds suddenly come together, as do the stories we learn about them. The contrast is very, very interesting,\u201d she added.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Two quick thoughts:<\/p>\n

First, it is traditionally believed that Noah\u2019s Ark landed in eastern Turkey \u2014 possibly at Mount Ararat<\/a>, or possibly Mount Judi<\/a> \u2014 so a story that locates the Ark on the shores of the Red Sea, across the Gulf of Aqaba from the Sinai peninsula, is\u2026 different.<\/p>\n

And second, it\u2019s interesting, in light of the environmental themes in Darren Aronofsky\u2019s Noah<\/a><\/i> and the Noah-ish Evan Almighty<\/a><\/i>, that this film would have a climate-change hook, too \u2014 though it sounds like more of a plot device than the central theme, here.<\/p>\n

The Ark<\/i> is one of multiple projects that MBC Studios currently has in development, but, in its own article about the studio a few weeks ago, The Hollywood Reporter<\/a><\/i> said \u201cThe Ark<\/i> is expected to be the first out of the block.\u201d So we may get to see it fairly soon.<\/p>\n

\u2014 The image at the top of this post is a still from Darren Aronofsky\u2019s <\/i>Noah (2014).<\/i><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The film will explore what would happen if the Ark was discovered by the Red Sea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":71544,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1341,55,63,6312],"class_list":["post-71525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-evan-almighty","tag-noah","tag-noah-2014","tag-zeinab-abu-alsamh"],"yoast_head":"\nSaudi Arabian studio making a movie about Noah's Ark<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The film will explore what would happen if the Ark was discovered by the Red Sea.\" \/>\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\/2021\/12\/saudi-arabian-studio-making-a-movie-about-noahs-ark.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Saudi Arabian studio making a movie about Noah's Ark\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The film will explore what would happen if the Ark was discovered by the Red Sea.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2021\/12\/saudi-arabian-studio-making-a-movie-about-noahs-ark.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"FilmChat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-12-10T19:30:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/227\/2021\/12\/n-fx-042-edited-scaled.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"768\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"350\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Peter T. 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