'Pontious Pilate' - Brad Pitt in WB's Historical Epic
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Brad Pitt Circling PONTIUS PILATE to Play the Man Who Sentenced Jesus to Death
Brad Pitt is no stranger to playing larger than life figures and he might soon add another to his ever impressive resume. Deadline reports he’s circling the title role in Pontius Pilate, a Biblical epic written by Vera Blasi. The film has yet to attract a director but if the script is strong enough to pique Pitt’s interest, that’s a good thing. Read more after the jump.
Deadline describes the script, which tells the life story of the man who famously presided over the cruxifiction of Jesus Christ, as “a Biblical era Twilight Zone.”
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Rather than a straight ahead Biblical film, Blasi’s script reads almost like a Biblical era Twilight Zone episode in which a proud, capable Roman soldier gets in way over his head. His arrogance and inability to grasp the devoutness of the citizenry and its hatred for the Roman occupiers and their pagan gods leads him to make catastrophic decisions. All of this puts him in a desperate situation and in need of public approval when he is asked to decide the fate of a 33-year old rabbi accused by religious elders of claiming he is King of the Jews. Along the way, such Roman emperors including Caligula and Tiberius and New Testament figures like John the Baptist, Salome and Mary Magdalene are seen in a tale that culminates with Pilate’s fateful decision to allow Jesus Christ to be crucified.
It is hard to put a new spin on the Greatest Story Ever Told, but the script had the twists and unexpected turns that satisfyingly combine history, political maneuvering and storytelling inventions reminiscent of such films as Braveheart and Gladiator. Blasi has also taken the care to explain the motivations of religious leaders like the Jewish high priest Caiaphas (who engineers Christ’s demise) as these leaders tried to bring varying religious sects under one roof, and the script doesn’t have the polarizing chill some felt in The Passion Of The Christ.
They then say that it has “twists and unexpected turns that satisfyingly combine history, political maneuvering and storytelling inventions reminiscent of such films as Braveheart and Gladiator.”
Pitt has several movies coming out in the next year (World War Z, Twelve Years a Slave, The Counselor) and is always attached or rumored to be circling something, but it doesn’t appear he’s committed to a green lit picture in the near future. That could end up being this, if they can get a director and green light.
Do you think Pitt would be good as Pilate? Is this an epic you’d be interested in seeing?