Newsbites: House of David! R&B! Light of the World! Dead Sea Squirrels! Book of Clarence!
For King + Country release the first single from the House of David soundtrack, Tyler Perry releases the first photo from his modernized Ruth & Boaz movie, and more.
For King + Country release House of David single
The first single from the House of David soundtrack is here.
It’s a cover of U2’s ‘40’ performed by the Christian pop duo For King + Country, and you can listen to it via the duo’s YouTube channel:
The song is based on Psalm 40, which the Bible says was written by King David—so it’s a very on-brand choice for the series, which will cover the first part of David’s story, when he was an obscure shepherd from Bethlehem who got involved with King Saul’s family and found fame as a giant-slayer.
For King + Country’s involvement with the series was first revealed in December. At the time, it was said that a full soundtrack would be coming out some time after the single, but I haven’t heard any details about that since.
In any case, the series itself—which stars Michael Iskander as David, Ali Suliman as Saul, Ayelet Zurer as Saul’s wife Ahinoam, Martyn Ford as Goliath, and Stephen Lang as the prophet Samuel—is set to premiere on Prime Video February 27.
Netflix releases first photo from modernized Ruth & Boaz movie
Deadline reports that Tyler Perry has released photos and info from all the films he is producing for Netflix this year—one of which is R&B, the modernization of the biblical story of Ruth and Boaz that was first announced last May.
Here’s the synopsis and a list of some of the key cast members:
From writers Michael Elliot and Cory Tynan, R&B is a contemporary version of the story of Ruth and Boaz, one of the most iconic love stories in the Bible. Set in Tennessee, the film tells the story of a young woman who escapes the Atlanta music scene to care for an elderly widowed woman and in the process finds the love of her life and gains the mother she never had.
The cast includes Serayah McNeill, Tyler Lepley, Phylicia Rashad, Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, Walnette Santiago, Nijah Brenea, James Lee Thomas, Jermaine Dupri, Lecrae Moore, Christopher Broughton and Yung Joc.
As I noted last October, the only actor on this list who has previous Bible-movie experience that I know of is Lecrae, who played Gabriel in 2023’s Journey to Bethlehem.
R&B does not yet have a release date. Stay tuned.
Light of the World announces new children’s-ministry curriculum
The makers of Light of the World, a hand-drawn animated life-of-Jesus movie coming to theatres in September, are preparing a free children’s-ministry curriculum to promote the film that will come out later this spring.
You can sign up in advance to receive the materials here.
The producers have also released a video in which the ministry leaders who developed the curriculum talk about their hopes for it. You can watch that video here:
Light of the World comes to theatres September 5.
Side note: This is at least the second animated life-of-Jesus movie that will be coming out this year, following the computer-animated The King of Kings in April. The Chosen is also releasing an animated life-of-Jesus series called The Chosen Adventures, but as far as I know, there are no plans to give that one a theatrical release.
The Dead Sea Squirrels comes to Minno this Friday
Speaking of animated “faith-based” shows, Minno is going to start streaming a series called The Dead Sea Squirrels this Friday. It’s created by VeggieTales co-creator Mike Nawrocki and produced by Christian music legend Steve Taylor, and it will even feature animation by Light of the World co-director Tom Bancroft.
Ordinarily I wouldn’t make a point of mentioning this—there are so, so many “faith-based” cartoons out there and I obviously can’t cover more than a fraction of them, plus I’ve never seen more than a few episodes of VeggieTales so I haven’t got the background for this particular series—but the titular squirrels are 2,000 years old and they go back to the time of Jesus (apparently they were “preserved” in Dead Sea salt, and they are revived and set loose on the modern world by an archaeologist and his son), so this series kind of falls into the Bible-movie realm that I try to cover.
You can watch a trailer for the series here:
Hat tip to the Animation World Network, which is where I first heard about this show.
The Book of Clarence gets nominated for its costumes, makeup
Remember The Book of Clarence?
Jeymes Samuel’s thought-provoking (and tonally all-over-the-place) fusion of the Bible-epic and stoner-comedy genres came and went a year ago, but it’s been popping up in my news feed lately because it’s been nominated for a few awards.
Alas, it has already “lost” one of those awards: It was nominated for the ‘Excellence in Period Film’ award by the Costume Designers Guild, but that prize went to Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu at the guild’s ceremony last Thursday.
However, the film still has a shot at winning up to two Black Reel Awards tonight: it is nominated both for costume design (alongside The Piano Lesson, Shirley, We Grown Now, and Wicked) and for hairstyling & makeup (alongside Bob Marley: One Love, Nickel Boys, The Piano Lesson, and Shirley).
Whatever happens, these nominations did give costume designer Antoinette Messam an opportunity to do some interviews, like this one at Forbes.com:
I was curious how Messam approached the costumes for Nicholas Pinnock character, Jesus, because I felt a gravitas to him, a formality. “I found that in the weight of the fabric we used on him,” she explained, “which was entirely different from what we used on our other actors. LaKeith Stanfield and RJ Cyler, who played our Clarence and Elijah, their fabrics were a lot lighter and they move really fast and there’s a lot of dancing. I wanted movement with their clothing.” . . .
When I first watched the film, I thought I saw socks and sandals, and I could not help but giggle when I made a note to ask Antoinette about it. “Oh, my God. There's a story, there's a story here,” she said to me, laughing a little herself. “I was warned by everyone once we got to Matera, at that time of the year, it was going to be cold. Of course, when you think of biblical times, you think everyone has on sandals, right?”
Similar to the question of how to keep Roman centurions warm while retaining historical accuracy, Messam also had to figure out how to keep her actors warm.
“The obvious thought is like, well, let's add socks. But when have you seen a biblical movie with socks? But I started to do my research, and there were socks. There were some really rough, you know, hand sewn, hand-knit-looking, wool tubing.” Messam told me that at first, she considered having socks made. “But at the numbers we needed,” she told me, “it was not possible, especially within our time frame. So we started testing, and we ended up with white cotton tube socks that we dyed and dyed and dyed. And then we aged and aged them, sanding them, pulling them apart, making holes that were then re-sewn. That's how we got that look. And it would have cost me thousands of dollars if we'd had them made, and then we still would have had to age them. But some days we had 100 or 150 background actors, 90% of them in socks that we provided.”
As for the film’s makeup artists, I haven’t seen any new interviews with them, but I’ve linked to a few interviews with department head Matiki Anoff in the past, most recently here. That post includes links to my earlier posts that quote her.