Goings on with The Gospel of John

Twelve and a half years ago I wrote about Bruce Marchiano's plans to film a new version of The Gospel of John. At the time, another word-for-word adaptation of the fourth gospel had only recently been made - and by Marchiano's previous employers, The Visual Bible. In the intervening period David Batty's team at Lumo have produced another word for word adaptation of John, and, I assumed that, given the delay, that Marchiano's project was off.

At least I did until I started researching The Visual Bible: Matthew for the book I'm writing and I happened to be listening to a podcast/interview with Marchiano from June 17th last year, where he explains that he is still involved with the project and where he is with it:

I'm in development...I'm very close to pre-production on a word-for-word film of The Gospel According to John. In fact right before we got online I was working the budget numbers to try to bring them in line...We'll shoot that probably within a year....So I'm raising money for a film The Gospel According to John and that's my main aim right now.

Since then there have been a few tweets by Marchiano. Firstly on the 12th December he tweeted:

"...for you who've donated to the making of "The Gospel Acc to John" please keep us in prayer as we're make some big product'n decisions--tomorrow morn we'll nail down location/date..."

Then the following day he posted this:

"...well, we didn't "nail it down" as far as location/date but we certainly narrowed it down. so JOHN is on the move!"

So after all this time it seems that this one is still ongoing. Credit to Marchiano, he is certainly tenacious and not one to give up easily! There is an official webpage for the film and the promise that those donating to it will get a screen credit. Marchiano's face is on the publicity, but I'm not sure whether he still harbours the desire to play the lead role himself, or whether he will be casting around for someone younger. In any case it seems like the project is hitting an exciting phase. I've been re-evaluating the influence of Marchiano's contribution, via Matthew to the Jesus film genre in general and with this project having been for roughly as long as this blog, I'm really interested to see how it turns out.