Website for Animated Ten Commandments Film

It's been over 3 months since I posted anything on the forthcoming animated Bible film The Ten Commandments (2007) featuring the voices of Sir Ben Kingsley, Christian Slater, Alfred Molina and Elliott Gould. It's actually due out next month, and there's now two related websites - one belonging to its production company Promenade Pictures, and the other belonging to the series as a whole, "Epic Stories of the Bible".

As you might expect the information on the Promenade site is fairly brief, preferring to point people to its subsidiary websites. It does appear that Promenade are currently "producing" no less than 17 films at the moment. Quite how far down the line these films are is hard to tell. This is the only one listed as an upcoming release, and the other five titles from the Epic Bible Series are also listed (Noah's Ark: The New Beninning (sic), David & Goliath, Samson & Delilah, The Battle Of Jericho, Genesis) even though the next one to be released is Noah's Ark which is still in pre-production (due for release in 2008).

Peter T. Chattaway (whose recent blog posts on this film served as a timely reminder) suggests that actually "none of these stories is particularly 'epic.'" I'm always nervous about the definition of the word "epic" (tending to go with Chuck Heston's maxim that "defining an epic is only slightly less complicated than making one"), but certainly the word has been so misused that it's difficult to know exactly how it should be applied today. Certainly the most epic sounding of the remaining five films is The Battle Of Jericho, which I noted just last week had hardly ever been filmed.

From my initial glance at the official website it seems to be fairly detailed. There's a bunch of downloads (printable posters, wallpapers, web banners, IM icons and music), free resources for schools, church groups and so forth, a competition, a press room, an email list a news stream as well as details of how to register for free movie screenings. I've not had time to register for the press section yet, so I'll perhaps report on that later in the month (along with any more updates that I come across in the run up to this film's release).

There was also an article on this film in Variety recently.