You just know that the second they hear that Steven Spielberg has so much as looked at their script, all the studio executives involved in a project find their hearts beating faster and their wallets getting itchy. But he’s always so busy and has the absolute power to choose whatever he works on. So you can imagine the scene at Warner Bros. now as the studio creeps closer to locking the director in to make Gods And Kings, a new take on the story of Moses.
Aside from that slightly popular book starting with the letter B, many people know Moses’ story from Cecil B. DeMille’s epic The Ten Commandments, which saw Charlton Heston as the main man. Sent off as baby in a basket down the Nile, adopted, leads the Jews out of slavery in Egypt, forms an army, receives the Ten Commandments and parts the Red Sea on his journey towards the Promised Land. Yeah, that old yarn.
According to Deadline’s sources, the plan is for Spielberg to apply his Saving Private Ryan aesthetic to the story: ”There have been glossy versions of the Moses story but this would be a real warrior story,” an “insider” tells Deadline.
The original idea for the current version of the film was born in a treatment, and since then Exam writer/director Stuart Hazeldine (who has also worked on Paradise Lost) and **Green Lantern **co-writer Michael Green have worked it up into a script. Warners showed it to The Beard in September and now talks have reached the point where he’s about ready to agree. Of course, he still has to get through post-production on Lincoln and make Robopocalypse, but if he does grab Gods, it will likely start filming in early 2013.
And it wouldn’t be the only Moses tale in development – Chernin Entertainment also has a Braveheart-style take on the story bubbling on the burners.You’ve got to think, though, that if they have to compete with Spielberg, the competition might just quietly slink away...