Newsbites: Malick! Bethlehem! Aronofsky! Chosen!
One film's in the editing suite, one film's waiting to be shot, one film came out eight years ago, and one TV series has a new clip to show us.
Is Terrence Malick’s The Way of the Wind ever coming out?
Jordan Ruimy reported last week that he’s been hearing rumours that The Way of the Wind—the Jesus movie that Terrence Malick shot back in 2019 under the working title The Last Planet—might never be completed. One of his contacts even said the film might end up being “an unfinished symphony”. Since then, one of the producers has told Ruimy “the film will be ready when It’s ready.” We shall see. In fairness, Malick’s films almost always spend years in post-production—2017’s Song to Song didn’t come out until four and a half years after it finished principal photography—so the three years this film has spent in post isn’t quite a personal record for Malick, yet.
Has The Road to Bethlehem not been filmed yet?
Back in December 2020, Deadline reported that The Prom producer Adam Anders was going to make his directorial debut on a musical feature called Road to Bethlehem, which was set to start filming in early 2021 “at the Jerusalem movie set in Utah.” I assume that’s the same set where The Chosen has been shot, and I remember wondering at the time how rapidly one show’s production schedule might follow the other’s. (Season 2 of The Chosen was shot in the winter of 2020-2021.) But now, in a story about some other project the producers are working on, Deadline says they are “prepping to shoot Road to Bethlehem”—so I guess it hasn’t been filmed yet?
Darren Aronofsky on the environmentalism of Noah
Eight years after it came out, I continue to be fascinated by Darren Aronofsky’s Noah. Aronofsky has released only one new film since then—2017’s mother!—but he’s got another one, The Whale, coming out soon, and he’s been busy producing nature shows like One Strange Rock and Welcome to Earth. IndieWire has a new interview with him about the environmental themes running through his work, and he had this to say about Noah: “I was trying to point out that there’s a story about environmentalism that’s the fourth one in the Bible, something that’s been a part of our literature and history for a long time. I was trying to depoliticize it in whatever way I could. The goal here is to be real honest and clear.” When I interviewed Aronofsky for Christianity Today in February 2014, he sort of downplayed the environmental aspects of the film (“I mean, it’s interesting because there’s been talk about is this an environmental message film? It’s not. We had to define what is the wickedness of man…”), but, given how obvious the themes were within the film itself, not to mention some of the other interviews he gave, I have always suspected that he was worried about how a push along those lines would play to the readership that I was representing at that time. So downplaying that theme while promoting the film to certain audiences might have been part of the “depoliticization” that he’s talking about now.
The Chosen previews another new scene from Season 3
The Chosen is going to preview another clip from Season 3 in a livestream on Tuesday, August 23, at 5:30pm PT / 8:30pm ET. At last report, the producers were hoping to premiere the new season in November, possibly in theatres.