• Bible Films Blog

    Looking at film interpretations of the stories in the Bible - past, present and future, as well as preparation for a future work on Straub/Huillet's Moses und Aron and a few bits and pieces on biblical studies.


    Name:
    Matt Page

    Location:
    U.K.












    Monday, October 12, 2009

    Fox to Make 300-Style Moses Movie

    Both Empire and Variety are reporting that Fox are planning to make a new film about Moses in the style of 2007's 300. The new film will be produced by Peter Chernin and Dylan Clark from Adam Cooper and Bill Collage's script. There's no definite news on who the director will be but the current favourite is Timur Bekmambetov who is working on a similarly styled film version of "Moby Dick".

    Here's a little bit more from Variety:
    20th Century Fox has made a preemptive acquisition of a pitch to tell the story of Moses in "300" style. The tale will start with his near death as an infant to his adoption into the Egyptian royal family, his defiance of the Pharoah and deliverance of the Hebrews from enslavement.

    [snip]

    The Moses story will be told using the same green screen strategy as "300," so it will feel more like that pic or "Braveheart" than "The Ten Commandments,” the 1956 Cecil B. DeMille film.

    The popular mythical and magical elements inherent in the Book of Exodus will be there--including the plagues visited upon Egypt and the parting of the Red Sea--but the Cooper & Collage version will also include new elements of Moses’ life that the writers culled from Rabbinical Midrash and other historical sources.
    That last line is imilar to the kind of thing Cecil B. DeMille said about his second version of The Ten Commandments. In reality, though, his film contained relatively little midrashic material and mainly used modern novelisations of the Moses story.

    I'm not sure I'm hugely optimistic about this film. Whilst I appreciated the style of Sin City and 300, I also found both films to be depressingly misogynistic. I'm not sure I'm too keen for a hyper-violent misogynistic take on a patriarchal story, even if it also looks fantastic. But who knows, perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised.

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    6 Comments:

    • At 10:27 pm, October 12, 2009, Blogger Juliette said…

      What a bizarre idea... I hope they mean 'with CGI backgrounds' rather than 'everyone walks around in their underwear and misogyny rules'...

      (I quite like 300, but I'm more willing to see Sparta graphic-novelised than the Bible...)

       
    • At 2:20 am, October 13, 2009, Blogger Karl Udy said…

      Actually I really want Bible stories to be graphic novelised. They don't all have to be ultra-violent or misogynistic - there are other styles that can be portrayed

       
    • At 8:16 am, October 13, 2009, Anonymous Auckland property manager said…

      I don't know what to say,I mean ,I don't know where to start with...Anyway,farewell.

       
    • At 8:49 am, October 13, 2009, Blogger Matt Page said…

      Thanks for your comments. It will be interesting to see what they actually mean by 300-style. If it's just that it will have the look of a graphic novel it could be very good, so I'm hopefully that's just canny marketing rather than the reality of what the film is actually like. Time will tell I suppose.

      Matt

       
    • At 5:14 am, October 19, 2009, Blogger Scott said…

      It will be interesting to see if this film gets any closer to production than did Paramount’s 2004 version, which was to be produced by Mark Gordon and written by Charles Randolph. As to the use of Midrash in a cinematic retelling of the story of Moses, Prince of Egypt (1998) actually adapted some of those of those tales to enhance its plot more recently and extensively than did DeMille.

       
    • At 9:05 am, October 20, 2009, Blogger Matt Page said…

      Thanks for that Scott. I think I had pretty much missed / forgotten about that one. Since then, of course, there have been two major Moses "films" both of which have been called The Ten Commandments. But yes somehow the Paramount one had escaped me.

      Matt

       

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