Anne Rice’s Jesus Biography Film Adaptation Update

May 24, 2012 by Tony

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 …

Anne Rice’s Christ the Lord to Become a Film

June 1, 2007 by Tony

In Fall 2008 moviegoers will be able to see a film adaptation of Anne Rice’s Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt (read the press release HERE). I read the book soon after its release and made some notes on its use of Christian Apocrypha. This is as good a time as any to share those notes.

The book tells the story of the Holy Family’s return from Egypt to their hometown of Nazareth. The story is told from Jesus’ perspective, but as an adult reflecting on his childhood. It opens with a seven-year-old Jesus in Alexandria, surrounded by his family, which includes Mary and her brother Cleopas, Joseph and his brothers Alphaeus and Simon, Jesus’ aunts Salome, Esther and Mary, Jesus’ cousins Little Joses, Judas, Little Symeon and Salome, and big brother James, the child of Joseph from a previous marriage (recalling the explanation for the brothers of Jesus given in the Protoevangelium of James).

Joseph and his brothers are employed in Egypt as carpenters. After Joseph completes a project for Philo, the famous teacher meets Jesus, who he calls “the most promising scholar he has ever seen” (p. 14). But things go wrong for the family when Jesus curses a boy, Eleazer, in the marketplace. The miracle echoes Infancy Thomas ch. 4, though in the gospel Jesus is five, not seven, and in Nazareth, not Egypt. Infancy Thomas is employed again when James recalls having seen Jesus make birds from clay on the Sabbath (Infancy Thomas…