Newsbites: Scorsese's Jesus! Funny Moses! Revisionist Judas! Modern Saul of Tarsus... and his sister!
Quick updates on Martin Scorsese's Jesus movie, the Moses comedy The Promised Land, a new Judas Iscariot movie, and the modernized-book-of-Acts series Testament.
Scorsese’s Jesus movie to start shooting this fall?
Martin Scorsese has been talking about making a new Jesus movie for over a year. Now Jordan Ruimy reports that cameras could start rolling on the film as early as this fall:
It looks like Martin Scorsese’s “The Life of Jesus” is definitely happening. It’s going to be starting production in the fall, most likely in October.
I can also confirm Andrew Garfield’s participation in the project, but Miles Teller, the other rumored actor, seems to be a maybe at the moment. The film, mostly set in the present day, will be shooting in Italy, Egypt and Israel.
There’s still no word as to who, exactly, Garfield or any other actor would be playing in this film. As Ruimy notes, it appears that at least part of the film will be set in the present day, so it won’t be a conventional biblical drama. Scorsese has indicated that the film might combine narrative and documentary elements, too.
So it’s anyone’s guess what role there might be for an actor in this film.
If Scorsese does start shooting the film in October, then he will presumably still be working on it when the first four episodes of Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints arrive on the Fox Nation streaming service in mid-November. Two of that show’s episodes will reportedly focus on John the Baptist and Mary Magdalene—so this Jesus movie isn’t the only New Testament-related project that Scorsese’s got going right now.
The Promised Land director Mitch Hudson speaks
Religion News Service has a new interview with Mitch Hudson, the writer-director of The Promised Land, a proposed mockumentary comedy series about Moses that launched its first (and so far only) episode a few weeks ago.
A few sample quotes:
What made you say yes to this concept?
At first, I was kind of like, how does this even work? What kind of funny is it? Monty Python funny, where it’s a bit more of a lampoon, a bit more critical? I wasn’t super comfortable with that. But then I was looking at it, and I was like, you know, the story of Moses has a lot of irony, and irony, a lot of times, is the basis for humor. I rediscovered the story in Exodus 18, where Jethro comes to Moses and basically says, you’re doing this all wrong. I was like, man, a father-in-law coming in to visit — this could be pretty funny. We can relate to a father-in-law who’s got different ideas of how to run things. So I wrote a pilot, and a plan for a whole series. . . .
What can you tell me about the show’s cast?
Some of our cast members are also on “The Chosen.” And that wasn’t always the case. When we filmed our pilot, the only cast member who was on “The Chosen” was Wasim No’mani, who plays a Pharisee named Yanni on “The Chosen,” and Moses in “The Promised Land.” When we were editing, I showed one of the early cuts to Dallas (Jenkins), and he was like, your cast is incredible. He cast several of them in Season Four of “The Chosen.”
I’ll be saying more about this series in the near future. Stay tuned.
Rupert Everett joins cast of Judas Iscariot movie
The Cinemaholic reports that a new movie about Judas Iscariot is in the works—and it sounds rather, uh, creative:
Rupert Everett and Paz Vega are bringing their seasoned acting talents to Giulio Base’s biblical feature! The performers have joined the cast of ‘La Versione di Giuda,’ which was initially titled ‘Judas’ Gospel.’ The film began its principal photography on July 19 in Calabria, Italy, and is expected to roll cameras for four weeks. Besides Everett and Vega, the cast includes John Savage, Darko Peric, Tomasz Kot, and Abel Ferrara. . . .
The film will retell the story of Judas, from his birth in a brothel to his ascension to one of Jesus’ apostles. The fortunes told by an oracle announced that his mother would give birth to a devil. He is born as a bastard in the brothel, and his mother dies in childbirth. He is named Judas by the women there, and he quickly grows into a hardened boy, killing the brothel’s owner after the latter tries to rape him.
The plot progresses with Judas becoming the new head and protector of the business. He runs the brothel and grows rich through the sale of women. A turning point in the pimp’s life comes when his sister, Mary Magdalene, is saved from being stoned by a man called Jesus. In complete awe of the healer, Judas leaves his legacy of violence and exploitation behind to become the final apostle. His transformation from someone who was predestined to be a devil to a disciple of the Messiah is completed with the ultimate act of selfless devotion.
The story doesn’t say which characters the actors are playing, but it appears from the photo that Everett is playing a priest or elder of some sort, while according to the film’s IMDb page, Ferrara is playing one of the Herods, Savage is playing one of the Josephs, Kot is playing one of the Simons, and Peric is playing Peter.
As far as I can tell, the only member of the cast who has acted in a Bible movie before is Vega, who played Mary Magdalene in 2012’s Mary of Nazareth. But Ferrara also has a Bible movie under his belt… or, rather, a movie about a Bible movie… as the director of 2005’s Mary, which is about an actress who plays Mary Magdalene.
Giulio Base, the director of this film, has also worked in this genre before. His credits include 2005’s Saint Peter and 2006’s The Inquiry aka The Final Inquiry—both of which were much more traditional in sensibility than it sounds like this film will be.
Meet Saul of Tarsus’s sister and nephew in Testament
It’s been a while since I last checked in on Testament, the upcoming Angel Studios series that sets the book of Acts in the present day, but the show has posted some really interesting behind-the-scenes videos to its YouTube channel over the past few months, so I figured I’d link to some of them here.
For example, there is this brand-new clip that came out four days ago, which takes a look back at the first week of production in mid-January:
Among other things, this video reveals that the series will get into Saul of Tarsus’s (i.e. Paul’s) relationship with his sister and nephew, who are not named in the Bible but are here named Eliza and Asher.
This intrigues me, as I can think of only a few very old films that have depicted Paul’s nephew, and none at all that have depicted his sister.
What’s more, Paul’s sister and nephew are mentioned only once in the book of Acts, near the end, when the nephew helps foil a plot against Paul (Acts 23:16-22).1 But the first episodes of Testament are supposed to be based on the early chapters of Acts, so unless the chronology has been rearranged, it appears this series is fleshing out Paul’s relatives as characters in their own right—long, long before they are needed for the plot.
Needless to say, as a fan of films that explore some of the more obscure aspects of the Bible—and as someone who has had a special interest in films about adult brother-sister relationships since at least 1996’s Secrets & Lies—I am very, very curious to see how this aspect of the Testament series turns out.
Then there is this video from three months ago, which introduces us to some of the actors who are playing “the ministers”, i.e. this show’s version of the Sanhedrin:
Among other things, this video reveals that Stuart Scudamore, who has appeared in quite a few Bible movies already, will be playing Gamaliel in this series. Angel Studios announced Scudamore’s involvement in the series back in February, but they did not say at the time who he would be playing (at least not in any of the materials that I saw).
And then there is this livestream from last month, which primarily consists of a chat between director Paul Syrstad and cinematographer James Ducker, but it also features a rough cut of a scene with Caiaphas and Pilate around the 38-minute mark:
In February, I made a list of all the actors who had been announced for this series, as well as which characters they were playing (where that information was available). Here’s a quick list of all the new cast info that we get from these videos:
These are the newly revealed actors:
Nisha Aaliya — Eliza (Saul’s sister)
Tanay Joshi — Asher (Saul’s nephew)
Rosa Samuels — Joanna
Paul Bailey — Andrew
Luke Hobson — Phil
Last February it was said that Aadar Malik would be playing someone named Philip, so I assume Hobson and Malik are playing two different Philips. Presumably one is playing Philip the apostle (Mark 3:18, John 1:43-48, etc.) and the other is playing Philip the evangelist (Acts 6:5, 8:4-40, 21:8)…?
Philip Rosch — Minister Alexander
Miltos Yerolemou — Minister John
And these are the already-known actors whose characters have now been named:
Stuart Scudamore — Gamaliel
Lizzie Hopley — Esther
Yasmin Paige — Mara
Regarding the newly-revealed actors: none of them have any Bible-movie experience that I know of, but I am intrigued to see that Aaliya, the actress playing Saul’s sister, previously played Raava, the Skrull who impersonated Don Cheadle’s Rhodey in Marvel’s Secret Invasion. That seems pretty high-profile.
Syrstad says in one of the videos that he hopes to make Testament a multi-season series. The first season is currently aiming for a release in early 2025.
I know of three films that have depicted Paul’s nephew and the role he played in foiling the plot against Paul’s life: a 1938 episode of the British Life of St Paul, a 1951 episode of the American Life of St. Paul, and a 1952 episode of The Living Bible.
Setting aside those films, as well as the Visual Bible’s word-for-word adaptation of Acts (in which the story about the nephew is merely narrated by Luke, not dramatized), I can think of only two major films that even mention the plot against Paul—and they both delete the nephew from the story. In 1985’s A.D. Anno Domini, a centurion says he heard about the plot against Paul, but he doesn’t say who he heard about it from. And in 2000’s The Bible Collection: Paul, it is the wife of one of the plotters—a woman who happens to be a friend of Paul’s—who hears about the plot from one of the other plotter’s wives.