Newsbites: Scorsese casts Spider-Jesus?
Newsbites: Scorsese casts Spider-Jesus?
Also: Testament: The Story of Moses notches a third week on the Netflix Top 10, and The Chosen hosts another livestream.
Scorsese eyeing Garfield, Teller for his Jesus movie
Variety reports that Martin Scorsese is thinking of casting Andrew Garfield and Miles Teller in his upcoming movie about Jesus. It is not clear whether the two actors are being considered for the same role or for different roles, and it is also not clear whether either of them is being considered for the part of Jesus or for some other role, like one of the disciples. Garfield previously worked with Scorsese on Silence, which was based on a book by Shūsaku Endō, just like the new Jesus film will be.
Variety notes that Garfield is already in his 40s, but that wouldn’t necessarily prevent him from playing Jesus, who was crucified in his early 30s. (Jesus began his ministry when he was “about 30”, according to Luke 3:23, and it is traditionally believed that his ministry lasted about three years.) Other recent actors who have played Jesus in their 40s include Ewan McGregor, Cliff Curtis, and Joaquin Phoenix.
Teller, for his part, is 37.
Garfield, of course, was the second big-screen Spider-Man, after Tobey Maguire and before Tom Holland; all three actors appeared together in the multiverse-themed Spider-Man: No Way Home. Offhand—and without checking any IMDb filmographies—I cannot think of all that many other Spider-Man veterans who have worked on Bible films, though of course Willem Dafoe (the Green Goblin) played Jesus himself in another Scorsese film, The Last Temptation of Christ, and Alfred Molina (Doctor Octopus) lent his voice to a couple of animated films, as Simon the Pharisee in The Miracle Maker and as Rameses II in the 2007 version of The Ten Commandments. Martin Sheen (Uncle Ben in the Garfield films) also starred in The Fourth Wise Man.1
Garfield, who once said he “fell in love with Jesus” while playing a Jesuit priest in Silence, has also played real-life Christians such as televangelist Jim Bakker (in The Eyes of Tammy Faye) and conscientious objector Desmond T. Doss (in Hacksaw Ridge).
Scorsese is also currently producing a docudrama series on The Saints for Fox Nation; two of its eight episodes will focus on the biblical characters Mary Magdalene and John the Baptist. The first four episodes will premiere on November 16.
Variety says production on the new Jesus film is expected to begin later this year in Italy, Egypt, and—regional conflicts permitting—Israel.
Testament: The Story of Moses stays on the Netflix Top 10 in Week 3
Testament: The Story of Moses, a three-part docudrama that came to Netflix in late March, is still in the streaming service’s Top 10 after three weeks.
The 256-minute series was streamed for 9 million hours during the week of April 8-14, which is equal to about 2.1 million views if you assume everyone watched it from the very beginning to the very end. That was good enough for 9th place on the Netflix English-language TV chart, which ranks shows based on views, not hours.
The series was in 2nd place for the two weeks before that, with 13.5 million views in its first week and 5.7 million views in its second.
As of the most recent chart, Testament was one of only four shows that had been in the Top 10 for more than two weeks. It will be interesting to see if it can stay on the chart through Passover, which starts Monday night and ends the following week.
The Chosen hosting another livestream this weekend
The Chosen creator Dallas Jenkins is going to host another livestream tomorrow to share some news about Season 5, which recently started filming, and Season 4, which came to theatres back in February but has not yet begun streaming due to some “legal matters”. Maybe those matters have been resolved now? We shall see.
Jenkins will also be interviewing For King & Country’s Joel and Luke Smallbone, who are currently promoting Unsung Hero, a movie about their family’s struggle to get into the American Christian music industry in the early 1990s. Joel—who recently played Herod’s son Antipater in Journey to Bethlehem—co-wrote and co-directed the film, and he also stars in it as his own father. The film opens this Friday, April 26.
It’s not surprising that The Chosen would help the Smallbones to promote their film, as the show and the band have a bit of a history together. For King & Country contributed songs to two of The Chosen’s Christmas music specials (‘Little Drummer Boy’ in 2020, and ‘Go Tell It on the Mountain’ in 2021), and Joel’s wife Moriah has played King David’s wife Bathsheba in two episodes of the series proper.
The livestream begins Sunday at 4pm PST / 7pm EST, and you can watch it here:
Yes, Benedict Cumberbatch (Doctor Strange in Spider-Man: No Way Home) has a small role in The Book of Clarence, but for the purposes of this paragraph it would take too long to explain and/or it would be impossible to describe without getting into spoilers.