Over at CatholicVote, I have part one of a conversation with Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, executive producers of NBC’s “A.D.: The Bible Continues,” premiering on Easter — Sunday, April 5 — at 9 p.m. ET/PT on NBC.
One of their goals (achieved, at least in part, because it’s on NBC) is to bring Biblical stories into popular entertainment:
After their huge personal promotional push for “The Bible,” which aired on History Channel at Eastertime in 2013, and then the two-hour movie version of it, “Son of God,” which came last year, Burnett and Downey may have finally gotten the U.S. entertainment press used to talking about God.
“It’s three years in a row,” said Burnett, “’13, ’14 and ’15. And you’ve been on the journey with us. It’s true, it’s become much more mainstream, which was really what our goal was, to go from niche to mainstream.
“And ‘A.D.’ is really great. The idea — how on Earth do these 12 Apostles survive and not get killed by the Romans — which they did anyway, eventually, but not at first. It took years. It was really a hard road to get there.”
“And on a road that was built by the Romans, too,” said Downey, “which was a sweet irony.”
One wonders, though, if, in God’s calculation, there might have been a purpose in putting Christ on Earth at just the moment that those Roman roads could carry His message to a large chunk of the world.
“It would have died out in the desert otherwise,” said Downey. “I think that’s true. Now we have the technological roads.”
Click here to see the rest.
Watch this space (and CatholicVote) for more to come from Burnett and Downey, along with several of the stars of the show, including Juan Pablo di Pace (Jesus), whom I spoke to in January, and Richard Coyle (Caiaphas) and Vincent Regan (Pontius Pilate), whom I’m talking to today!
In the meantime, here’s an inside look, courtesy of The Wall Street Journal:
Image: Courtesy NBC
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In