Director Paul Verhoeven to make Gritty Jesus Movie

From the director of Robocop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Showgirls, Starship Troopers (I have to buy this one on DVD soon) and Hollow Man comes the true historical film about Jesus! Ohh boy!


From Darkhorizons.com:

Verhoeven To Do Gritty Jesus Movie
Posted: Friday December 1st 2006 1:31am
Source: Empire Magazine
Author: Garth Franklin

God gave this world the cinematic genius of director Paul Verhoeven, and now the man wants to give some back to the maker.

The man who helmed such sex-driven, violence-fuelled, satire-laced action thrillers as “Robocop”, “Total Recall”, “Starship Troopers”, “Showgirls” and “Basic Instinct” wants to do a Jesus movie it seems.

Empire Magazine reports that Verhoeven is rumoured to be developing “Christ, the Man” which explores the idea that Jesus Christ was merely a mortal.

Much of the story will be based on Verhoeven’s work as a member of the Jesus Seminar, a research team of several hundred academic New Testament scholars whose purpose is to use historical methods to determine what Jesus, as a historical figure, may or may not have said or done.

Their findings portrayed him as a wandering sage who did not found a religion or rise from the dead, but preached in startling parables and aphorisms, often turning common ideas upside down and confounding the expectations of his audience.

Of course some extreme Christian fundamentalist groups might get upset with the project, something Verhoeven himself is keenly aware of – “My scriptwriter told me not to do the movie in the United States because they (Christians) might shoot me. It’s not a joke at all. I took that very seriously. So I took his advice and decided to write a book about it first”.

Verhoeven, no stranger to controversy, expects some fall out – “I think he’s going to be getting a lot of focus and heat over this, if it’s true, and there will be groups who will be protesting quite heavily against this”.

I’ve been hearing about Verhoeven thinking about making a Jesus movie for about five to six years. He had been thinking about making a film about either Jesus or Hitler…I mean, both are pretty controvercial and both are pretty much on two separate sides of the spectrum. I knew that he was doing research on both and which ever one was more interesting was the one that he was going to direct. I didn’t know that he went off and decided to help write a book about it.

In my opinion, this is great! I don’t know if I’d go see it in the theater, but I would definately view the film some how. I think its very ballsy, but I feel that after Basic Instinct, there was a different vibe to this director. Its as if the industry cut his balls off. Robocop, Total Recall and Basic Instinct were so balls to the wall that everything afterwards has been such a huge let down. Especially Hollow Man, which looked as if the director was on cruise control. I didn’t mind Starship Troopers, but its such a product of its time (the movie is now almost ten years old!–I also read that they are making Starship Troopers 3 and they are talking to Casper Van Diem on reprising his role in the film (he was the main character in part one) and in three his character would be a General). I’m happy that he is finally starting to move forward in making another film and I hope that this works out just fine.

–Socram

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