Newsbites: Branagh! Ben-Hur! Testament! Clarence! Chosen!
Newsbites: Branagh! Ben-Hur! Testament! Clarence! Chosen!
Kenneth Branagh's first Bible movie is an animated film from South Korea; the digital effects in Timur Bekmambetov's Ben-Hur remake get a second look; and more.
The King of Kings reveals Dickens-family cast members
The Hollywood Reporter has revealed or confirmed the three actors who will be playing Charles Dickens, his wife Catherine, and their son Walter in The King of Kings, an animated South Korean film based on Dickens’ short story The Life of Our Lord:
Kenneth Branagh is voicing the part of Charles Dickens himself.
Uma Thurman is voicing the part of Catherine.
And Roman Griffin Davis, who starred in Jojo Rabbit, is voicing the part of Walter (as the IMDb reported at least two weeks ago).
Dickens wrote The Life of Our Lord for his children in the late 1840s; he read it to them every Christmas, and it wasn’t published until after the last of his children had passed away in the 1930s. In keeping with the book’s roots, the film will not be a direct depiction of the life of Jesus but, rather, will explore it through the Dickens family—including their cat!—as they “become immersed” in his story.
To my knowledge, none of these actors have been in any previous Bible movies.
There is also no word yet on who is voicing the biblical characters in this film, though you can still watch a clip from the film (with possibly temporary voices) here:
Incidentally, I interviewed Branagh in 1997, shortly after his film adaptation of Hamlet came out. You can read a transcript of that interview here.
Ben-Hur remake gets praise for its digital horses
Remember the 2016 remake of Ben-Hur? Probably very few people do.
Even so, last week, VFX Artists React—a YouTube series in which visual-effects artists break down which effects work and which ones don’t in different films and TV shows—spent nearly four minutes looking at the film and its chariot race, and they were very impressed by the digital horses and chariots in that sequence.
The fun starts at the 6:49 mark:
Incidentally, one thing I learned from this clip is that Ben-Hur’s digital effects were supervised by Chris MacLean, who now oversees the VFX on Apple TV+’s Foundation. The effects on that show are fantastic, so it makes sense that the effects on Ben-Hur looked pretty good—even if the film itself wasn’t up to snuff in other areas.
I wrote a lot about the Ben-Hur remake before, during, and after its release eight years ago. You can read all those posts via the tag at my blog here.
Testament: The Story of Moses drops out of the Netflix top ten
Just a quick note for those keeping tabs on Testament: The Story of Moses: the Netflix docudrama series fell off the global English-language top ten in its fourth week (April 15-21), after landing in 2nd place for its first two weeks and in 9th place for its third.
However, if I’m reading the spreadsheet that was attached to the list correctly, it seems the series is still in the top ten in Israel, Romania, and quite a few countries with a strong Muslim population—including not just Middle Eastern countries, where in some cases it’s still one of the top three English-language series (it’s #1 in Egypt and Oman!), but countries like Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Nigeria, too.
As ever, I’m curious to see if the series will return to the chart for Passover, which began last Monday, April 22, and ends this Tuesday, April 30.
The Book of Clarence makeup artist discusses challenging scenes
The Book of Clarence is still rolling out overseas—it came to the UK just last week, six months after it had its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival there—so we’re still getting new interviews with some of the filmmakers.
This week, Awards Daily spoke to Matiki Anoff, head of the makeup department. I’ve linked to interviews with Anoff before, e.g. here and here. Here are a few quotes from the new interview that cover topics I don’t recall coming across before:
AD: Tell me about the Blue Goddess and that character’s design.
MA: Jeymes wants this recurring woman in every movie [he makes]. We saw her in The Harder They Fall. She looked a lot different there. But for [The Book of Clarence], given the period, it’s a stretch of the imagination. So, I said, ‘Okay, she can be blue, but she will look the period.’ So, I designed this intricate gold filigree that went around her head. In that era, it would have been in henna, but henna would not have shown up on the blue body paint. So, we went with gold. Then I asked that her fingers be decked in gold because it was a very dark, moody scene, and we had to have something that would stand out. Laura, who did the artwork, suggested some diamonds, so we put some little gemstones in the makeup. We pulled the eyes so they would have that upward sweep. And it came out incredibly well. . . .
Unfortunately, there was a scene that didn’t make the movie, and that was the Leper Colony, which was amazing. We did amazing leprosy for that scene. So that, more than anything, had it been in [the final cut], would have been very realistic and very moving. . . .
AD: What was your most challenging day on set?
MA: The blue lady was a particularly challenging [laughs] because I was with the crew that were doing the blue lady, but I’m also I’m running the whole department. So I would come, I would check, ‘Yes, I like this. No, change this, this, this and this.’ Then I’d go back and do my other characters and go back and forth. Her, her makeup took around four hours. It was quite extensive makeup, hair, and costuming. That was a challenging day. The leprosy day was really challenging. It’s really unfortunate that it didn’t make the final cut.
For more interviews with the filmmakers, check the links above or the round-up here.
The Chosen teases possible Season 4 release, ChosenCon date
For those who missed Dallas Jenkins’ livestream last Sunday, the key announcement is that he expects to start streaming Season 4 of The Chosen “sometime in the next four to seven weeks”—which, at this point, would be in the next three to six weeks.
The season, which premiered in its entirety in theatres last February, has been held back from streaming because of certain unspecified “legal matters”, but it sounds like a ruling of some sort is expected soon—and Jenkins said the season will start streaming “the Sunday after the decision”, with episodes coming out at a pace of two per week, “probably on Sunday and Thursday.”
Jenkins also announced that the show’s second fan convention, aka ChosenCon, will happen September 20-21. He said the location will be announced when tickets go on sale May 6, though it is rumoured to be taking place in Florida.
(The first ChosenCon took place in Dallas, Texas last October, but in March of this year, Dallas Film Commissioner Tony Armer told the podcast The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood—around the 42-minute mark in the episode below—that the conference has “outgrown Dallas” and will be moving to Orlando later this year.)
Here again, for those who missed it, is last Sunday’s livestream: