Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Anne Rice's "Christ the Lord" to become a movie

ANNE RICE'S NOVEL CHRIST THE LORD is set to become a movie: BH Interview: Director Cyrus Nowrasteh, Anne Rice Join Forces to Bring ‘Christ the Lord’ to the Big Screen (Christian Toto, Big Hollywood). Excerpt:
Tensions can often flare between authors and filmmakers, but Nowrasteh reports a fluid give-and-take between his creative team, which includes his co-screenwriter and wife Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh. and Rice.

“Once we had a draft that everyone was excited about, we kicked it back to her. We wanted her detailed input and participation,” he says. “We felt a responsibility to her. We didn’t want to go out with the script until she put her stamp on it.”

It certainly helped that Rice is no stranger to films inspired by her texts.

“Anne understands the challenges inherent to adapting a novel to the screen,” he says, referring to Rice-inspired productions like “Interview with a Vampire” and “Queen of the Damned.”

“Christ the Lord,” is currently in pre-production, is what Nowrasteh calls a “work of informed fiction.”

“There’s a great chapter at the end of the book where she talks about her sources, what she worked from,” he says, including the New Testamanet, the Apocrypha and early legends pertaining to the life of Christ. “It’s not as if she sat down and made a story. She really did her research.”
For lots more on the novel, go here and follow the links. There was a report some years ago of a movie version in production in Israel, but I don't know what became of that project. It doesn't seem to be the same as this one.