Anne Rice’s Jesus Biography Film Adaptation Update

The first installment of Anne Rice's Jesus trilogy, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, is set to be made into a film. I commented on this development a few years ago (HERE), but there seems to have been some development in the project. Chris Columbus is now attached to the film. Since the book covers Jesus' early years, a time in his life documented in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and other infancy gospels, Columbus seems an ideal choice–his earlier work, including Home Alone and several Harry Potter films, similarly features precocious youngsters, some of whom have superhuman abilities (not you Caulkin). For more on this, see the interview at the Comic Book Resources site. Despite its heavy reliance on apocryphal texts, Rice thinks the film (and the book, I assume) are "completely biblically correct." Here is an excerpt:

Last question I wanted to ask to wrap all this up — recently, we learned that Chris Columbus and his team are working on an adaptation of "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt." That is — obviously when a book comes out like that and obviously discussions around a book, even when it is very respectful of the Christ story, there's one level of discussion and it seems like when a movie gets made, there's going to be another crazy huge level. Do you feel prepared for that after all the other books you've written and everything else that's happened and whatever happens with that?

Well, "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt" is really, really well-researched. It's a solid biblical novel. It's Jesus according to the Bible. It's, of course, my radical attempt to present him as a child and to get into his head and talk about his thoughts as he realizes he's God and man and also puts the knowledge away from himself so he can grow in wisdom and stature as scripture tells us he did. I think that as we go forward with that movie — their script, by the way, is completely faithful to the book and is completely biblically correct. I think with that, we can put aside a lot of the doubts of many Christians maybe who want to come to see the movie, mainly with the Christian audience wants to know is that you aren't playing fast and loose with Jesus, that it's going to be the Jesus they believe in and recognize. They can certainly know that with that book and I think with this movie.

I read the script and I thought it was just amazing. Cyrus and Betsy Nowrasteh wrote it and it's completely solid. There's nothing in there that's going to offend anybody, really. I think that's — now, certain members of the audience may be outraged by me. I'm the outrageous, controversial Anne Rice that left organized religion — but nevertheless, that book is a solid embodiment of my love for and my faith in Jesus. There's no question about that. If there is some kind of controversy, I think we'll come out on the winning side of that controversy.