Newsbites: Anthony Hopkins as Herod! Netflix goes "faith-based"! New animated Jesus film! And more!
Newsbites: Anthony Hopkins as Herod! Netflix goes "faith-based"! New animated Jesus film! And more!
Also: New release dates for The Best Christmas Pageant Ever and Angel Studios' David; and Testament: The Story of Moses has been #2 at Netflix for two weeks running.
Just a quick round-up of some news-y items that have come my way the past few days.
Anthony Hopkins is King Herod in Mary
Deadline reports that filming has just wrapped on a hitherto secret film about Mary and Joseph called Mary, which stars Anthony Hopkins as King Herod:
In coming-of-age story Mary, the title character is shunned following the otherworldly conception of her child and forced into hiding. King Herod’s relentless drive to maintain power at any cost ignites the murderous pursuit of the newborn child that he believes is a threat to his reign on the throne. The film sees the young Mary and Joseph on the run and having to hide their baby, Jesus, at all costs.
A few of the key personnel on this film already have Bible-movie experience:
Anthony Hopkins played Paul in 1981’s Peter and Paul and Methuselah in 2014’s Noah.
Ori Pfeffer, who plays Mary’s father Joachim, lent his voice to 2017’s The Legend of King Solomon and is reportedly playing a Pharisee in Terrence Malick’s The Way of the Wind, which is still in post-production.
Charley Boon, whose role in Mary is not specified, played Philip in 2012’s The Life of Jesus Christ, a miniseries produced by the LDS church.
Director D.J. Caruso previously directed 2022’s Redeeming Love, a romance based on the story of Hosea that takes place during the California Gold Rush.
Producer Hannah Leader founded The Lumo Project, which produced word-for-word adaptations of all four gospels about a decade ago and has started producing adaptations of the Old Testament and the Book of Acts, as well.
But what’s really interesting about this film is that it’s being produced by Mary Aloe and promoted by Joel Osteen. Ten years ago, Aloe and Osteen were collaborating on a movie about Mary that was going to be based on a script co-written by Benedict Fitzgerald, the co-writer of The Passion of the Christ. Deadline says the current film was written by someone called Timothy Michael Hayes. So is this the same basic film, but re-written? Or is it based on a completely new script altogether?
Netflix to produce “faith-based” films
Is Netflix getting religion? The Hollywood Reporter says the streaming service’s film division is going through a major reorganization: in the past, Netflix movies have been overseen by different executives based on the size of their budgets, but now, different executives will be responsible for different films based on their genres—and one of the highlighted genres will be “faith-based” films:
Several sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that the features division at the streaming service will now be split up by genre — such as sci-fi, rom-com and faith-based. . . .
Under the new structure, Ori Marmur will oversee action, fantasy, horror and sci-fi titles, while Kira Goldberg will handle thrillers, dramas and family films. Niija Kuykendall will oversee faith-based, young adult and holiday offerings, while Jason Young will handle comedies and rom-coms.
Netflix has licensed plenty of “faith-based” films over the years, but have they ever made a point of producing any prior to this? The only “faith-based” Netflix film that I can think of is 2021’s A Week Away—a musical set at a summer camp, featuring cameos by Amy Grant and Steven Curtis Chapman—and even that, I think, might have been an acquisition or produced by companies outside of Netflix.
In any case, it’s worth noting that the reorganization at Netflix is taking place under the leadership of Dan Lin, a producer on several hit films (The Lego Movie, Sherlock Holmes, the live-action Aladdin) who took charge of Netflix’s entire film division just last week. Lin has described himself as a “religious” person, and when he spoke at the Biola Media Conference a decade ago, the Christian university that hosted the conference said in its press release that Lin and his family were attending a church in the Hollywood area.1 Lin was also one of the producers attached to a movie about Moses that Steven Spielberg was thinking of directing a dozen years ago.
So, it’s interesting that Netflix now has a division specifically committed to “faith-based” films under his leadership.
And it’s interesting that this is happening at a time when Amazon Prime has been dipping its toe in the “faith-based” waters, releasing a 34-episode series—a “hope opera”, not a soap opera, in the words of producer and co-star Roma Downey—based on Christian novelist Karen Kingsbury’s book series The Baxters, and greenlighting a series about Saul and David from the co-director of Jesus Revolution.
It would seem that two of the biggest platforms are beginning to go out of their way to court the audience that has made big hits of The Chosen and other religious dramas. So… will Apple TV+ or any of the studio-affiliated streamers follow suit?
Testament: The Story of Moses hits #2 on the Netflix chart… again!
In related news, Netflix reports that the docudrama Testament: The Story of Moses has been their 2nd-most-watched English-language TV series for two weeks running.
The three-episode series premiered on March 27, so it was only available for five days during the first week in question (March 25-31), but it was streamed around the world for over 57 million hours that week, more than any other series save the sci-fi epic 3 Body Problem. (It was also streamed for many more hours than any film on Netflix; the top Netflix film that week, Heart of the Hunter, logged 19.7 million hours.)
When you divide the total hours viewed by the series’ 256-minute runtime, you get 13.5 million views during those first five days.
Total views went down during the show’s second week (April 1-7), which is par for the course, but the series was still streamed for over 24 million hours, which, if you assume everyone was watching it from the very beginning to the very end, comes to 5.7 million views—still good enough for 2nd place behind 3 Body Problem. (Testament also fell behind the non-English series Parasyte: The Grey, which had 6.3 million views.)
Passover happens to be just a couple weeks away. It will be interesting to see if Testament gets a bump.
Korean animated film based on Charles Dickens story about Jesus in the works
The Hollywood Reporter says the South Korean company Mofac Animation is working on a new feature film based on a Charles Dickens story about the life of Jesus:
Director Seong-ho “Jay” Jang’s faith-based feature The King of Kings, inspired by a posthumously published Dickens story, is currently in the final stages of production and seeking distribution. The film’s team has quietly been recording dialogue with what they say is a a high-profile voice cast that it plans to reveal at a later date.
The King of Kings follows Charles Dickens and youngest son Walter as they bond over the famed author’s short story “The Life of Our Lord,” which was a holiday tradition in the Dickens household, though it was never published until 1934, decades after the author’s death. Through animation, the pair and their cat Willa become immersed in the story of Jesus, involving notable friends and foes.
Jang has extensive experience in visual effects but this will be his first film as writer or director. He collaborated on the script with Rob Edwards, who worked on the Disney films Treasure Planet and The Princess and the Frog.
And while the Reporter says the movie’s cast is still under wraps, the film’s IMDb page does list one actor, i.e. Jojo Rabbit’s Roman Griffin Davis, who is apparently voicing young Walter Dickens. Time will tell how accurate that is.
In the meantime, you can watch a teaser here:
You can also see some concept art and behind-the-scenes footage in the final minute of this interview from July 2020 (sorry, it’s all in Korean, no subtitles!):
Animation Magazine also has some concept art and quotes from the filmmakers.
The Hollywood Reporter story came out a couple weeks ago but I missed it at the time. Thanks to Gina Dalfanzo for noting it at her Dickensblog.
New release dates for David, The Best Christmas Pageant, and more
Some new release dates were announced this week. In chronological order:
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, directed by The Chosen creator Dallas Jenkins, will now open on November 8 instead of November 15.
Bonhoeffer, from Angel Studios, will open November 22.
Homestead, also from Angel Studios, will open December 20.
David, an animated film from Angel Studios, will open November 21, 2025.
Re: that last film, IndieWire reports that when Angel Studios chief marketing officer Alex Nielsen introduced the film at CinemaCon this week, he said, “We intend to release the most successful animated film of all time.”
As IndieWire notes, that record is currently held by the photorealistic remake of The Lion King, which grossed 1.7 billion dollars worldwide five years ago. Among more conventional animated films, the record is held by Frozen II, which grossed $1.5 billion worldwide just a few months after The Lion King came out.
So you can’t fault Angel Studios for lack of ambition!
The Angel film slate for 2025 also includes Jacob, a sequel (of sorts) to last year’s His Only Son. No other details were announced at CinemaCon, according to IndieWire, but the Angel Studios blog had a brief update on the film a couple weeks ago, looking mainly at some of the research that is going into the film right now.
Many thanks to Kate O’Hare for reminding me about these references to Lin’s faith.