> Put Jesus or the heroes of the Old Testament in 'em and they will not lose money,
> provided you don’t try to release them near NY or LA.
I presume you’re exaggerating here. The movie Son of God is showing at eight movie theaters within Manhattan and quite a few others within a short distance from there. It’s also showing at six theaters with a Los Angeles address and quite a few others within a short distance from there. It may be true that such movies make less money in New York or Los Angeles than elsewhere, but they certainly do get shown there.
I dunno…I think Exodus sounds more promising than Noah’s Ark. Exodus has a ready-made three-act plot (that you can embellish without it looking like padding), a dramatic arc, potential for very gripping scenes…but with Noah’s Ark, all you have is a big boat and a bunch of animals. Anything you could add to it WOULD just seem like blatant padding.
There was a TV movie of Noah’s Ark some years back with Jon Voight. I never saw it, but from what I read, it was rather ridiculous. Among other things, they made Noah the cousin of Lot so they could shoehorn in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Exodus does have one disadvantage though…the story was done so incredibly well in The Prince of Thieves. This may be blasphemy (heh) for some, but I actually think PoT has it all over The Ten Commandments. It tells a tighter, more dramatic story in half the time. The characters are engaging, the songs and musical score are awesome, and the Angel of Death scene (in almost complete silence) was one of the creepiest, most effective moments in an animated movie.
Here’s a quick but interesting read about how the studio, which had final cut, took Noah away from Aronofsky, re-edited it to make it more bible-thumper friendly, found that it didn’t focus group any higher than Aronofsky’s original vision, and gave it back to him virtually unchanged. I’m on my iPod Touch and can’t fancy link or pull quotes.
There are links to more in-depth articles in there. That’s just an overview.
The whole Noah story (indeed, the bible in general) makes me roll my eyes, but I am so there. I like to support auteurs and I’m looking forward to this.
I think all this talk of the Right and the Christian Right is ignoring the most fundamental “right” of all.
It’s the lack of a copyright which gets the producer/investor salivating. The Bible is a pre-sold property which, if done right, can be milked for tens of billions, er, can reawaken today’s youth from their spiritual apathy.
You might want to take a look at some of the threads in Cafe Society, we’ve been doing “bible study” as a literary and historical critique, ignoring “religion” per se.
