Last year, Chris Columbus’ 1492 Pictures made a deal with Rise Entertainment to develop their films, including a film adaptation of Anne Rice’s novel, Christ the Lord. Yesterday, FilmDistrict put out a press release that announces that they will distribute the adaptation sometime in March 2015. The story focuses on the childhood of Jesus, around 7 or 8 years old, as he begins to understand his destiny along with his miraculous powers. The script is being written by Betsy and Cyrus Nowrasteh, whom the latter is also directing, who also wrote The Stoning of Soraya M., an acclaimed film about the stoning of an Iranian woman who was (inaccurately) accused of infidelity.
Rice’s 2005 book was received pretty well received given the material which sometimes can cause controversy. Rice is a pretty big literary name as she also wrote Vampire Chronicles, from which the movie Interview With A Vampire came from, and also Queen of the Damned.
It’ll be interesting to me to see how they film this and the direction it takes as the source material usually brings out some sort of emotion, whether positive or negative. The other interesting thing about this project is that it’s about Jesus as a young boy. Most films that center around Jesus are in his adult years as a man in his ministry or him dying on the cross. So this could be a fun and different look at a boy that, no matter how you look at it, changed a lot in the world. If the movie is done right, it’ll be a fun period piece that could sidestep all the potential controversy that would surround it. I’m pretty curious to see how it will come together.
Christ the Lord will most likely shoot sometime later this year and it’s release date is March 2015.
