Adam Anders' Nativity musical now filming in Spain

The film stars Antonio Banderas as King Herod and Christian pop stars like Lecrae and Joel Smallbone in other key roles.

No pictures from the Nativity musical are available yet, so I’m going with this image of Joel Smallbone playing King Xerxes in The Book of Esther (2013).

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.”

Then, in August 2022, Deadline reported that Anders and his producers were still “prepping to shoot Road to Bethlehem” at some point in the near future.

Now, in February 2023, Deadline reports that Anders is already shooting the film in Spain—and it is currently untitled. The film will come out on November 10.

With this announcement comes the first bit of casting news:

• Fiona Palomo — Mary

• Milo Manheim — Joseph

• Antonio Banderas — King Herod

• Joel Smallbone — King Herod’s son Antipater

• Lecrae — Gabriel

• Rizwan Manji — Gaspar, one of the Magi

• Geno Segers — Balthazar, one of the Magi

• Omid Djalili — Melchior, one of the Magi

• Moriah — undefined

• Stephanie Gil — undefined

Anders wrote the script with Peter Barsocchini (High School Musical), and he wrote the new songs for the film with Nikki Anders and Peer Åström (whose combined credits include Glee, High School Musical, Descendants, Rock of Ages, etc.).

A few quick notes on today’s news:

• I don’t believe Antonio Banderas has ever been in a Bible movie before, per se, but he did star in The Body (2001) as a Jesuit priest who investigates an archaeologist’s claim to have discovered the bodily remains of Jesus.

• This is not the first time Joel Smallbone—who is one half of the Christian pop duo For King & Country—has played a royal figure in a Bible movie: he previously played the Persian King Xerxes in Pure Flix’s The Book of Esther (2013).

• Is Smallbone really playing Antipater, the son of Herod’s who was executed by Herod mere days before Herod died? It might make more sense if he was playing Antipas, who plays a significant role in the gospels as the son of Herod’s who went on to execute John the Baptist and give his approval to the death of Jesus.

• If the sons of Herod are going to be a prominent part of this film, then I am curious as to how deeply this film—a family-oriented musical produced by people who are best-known for making upbeat high-school comedies, etc.—can dive into the Herodian part of the story. Will it deal with the slaughter of the infants, for example?

• Historically, the Magi were Persian, but artistically, it has long been tradition to depict the three wise men as representative of the three continents that were known to Christendom before the age of exploration, with one being Asian, one being African, and one being European. The wise men in this film, however, are all of African or Asian descent (and one of the Asians is, yes, Persian).

• The release date is a month and a half before Christmas itself, which seems early, but it’s not that different from the release dates for The Star (November 17, 2017) or the animated version of The Grinch (November 9, 2018).

The film will be distributed by Sony Pictures through their Affirm Films label, which specializes in “faith-based” movies. Past releases of theirs have included the Bible flicks Risen (2016), The Star (2017), and Paul, Apostle of Christ (2018).

This film will also mark the third time in as many decades that a major studio has released a big-screen movie about the birth of Jesus, following The Nativity Story in 2006 and The Star in 2017—but the three films are all coming at the story from different angles, genre-wise: one dramatic, one animated, and now one musical.

So, with The Chosen Season 3: Finale in the rear-view mirror and His Only Son coming out next month—to say nothing of the possibility that The Book of Clarence and Terrence Malick’s Jesus movie might come out this year (hey, we can dream in that last case, right?)—this is turning out to be quite the year for Bible movies.

Suffice it to say I’ll be keeping tabs on all of these projects.

February 23 update: The Leader, a Spanish news site, says the film will start shooting at the Castle of Santa Bárbara in Alicante on Monday. It also says the film is called Road to Bethlehem, but maybe that’s just old information and/or a working title.