Fox Takes on an Epic 300-Like Retelling of the Life of Moses [Excerpts]
It looks like Hollywood is all out of books to adapt, because now they're looking to adapt stories from the book. That's right, the world's best-selling book of all time, the Holy Bible, is headed to the big screen in a big way. Or at least a part of it will end up there as Variety reports that former News Corp. president Peter Chernin will take on his "first significant film project acquisition" for Fox as he aims to deliver a "retelling of the story of Moses, from his near death as an infant to his adoption into the Egyptian royal family, his defiance of the Pharaoh and deliverance of the Hebrews from enslavement."
Of course, this doesn't sound like it's going to be your grandparent's Moses, because the story (written by [the movie] Accepted writers Adam Cooper and Bill Collage) was conceived in the same vein as Cooper and Collage's Moby Dick script, which was pitched as a re-imagining in the same style as Zack Snyder's 300. And it's that level of visual story-telling that will really bring out the true epic nature of the life of Moses. But who can we get to fill the shoes of this Biblical hero? Immediately my mind says Ian McKellen, but it's just too close to Gandalf, and Michael Gambon has the same issue playing Dumbledore in the Harry Potter films.
[TBC: “Reimagining” is another name for not accurately telling a story. As A.W. Tozer noted in The Menace of the Religious Movie: “The temptation to introduce ‘new’ things into the work of God has always been too strong for some people to resist. The Church has suffered untold injury at the hands of well intentioned but misguided persons who have felt that they know more about running God's work than Christ and His apostles did. A solid train of boxcars would not suffice to haul away the religious rubbish which has been brought into the service of the Church with the hope of improving on the original pattern. These things have been, one and all, positive hindrances to the progress of the Truth, and have so altered the divinely-planned structure that the apostles, were they to return to earth today, would scarcely recognize the misshapen thing which has resulted.” See former Hollywood screenwriter T.A. McMahon's Showtime for the Sheep for more insights into the biblical problems that arise when attempting to translate the Bible into movies.]
