Ridley Scott’s Exodus has been coming together for awhile now, starting with the casting of Christian Bale as Moses and Joel Edgerton as the Pharaoh Ramses II. Now, Aaron Paul, Sigourney Weaver and John Turturro have all been added to the cast of Ridley Scott’s epic of, well, Biblical proportions.
Best known for his role in Breaking Bad, Paul has signed on to play the slave Joshua, who goes on to finally lead his people to the promised land. Weaver and Turturro meanwhile are taking on the parts of Seti and Tuya, the parents of Ramses. According to First Showing, Ben Kingsley might also be in talks to play a Hebrew scholar, because Sir Ben can play any nationality whatsoever as long as it’s not his own.
Exodus purports to explore some of the untold aspects of Moses’ life (in cinema at least), presumably including some of his less than savory behavior that other directors have glossed over. This story has been told before, after all, by directors like Cecil B. Demille and with stars like Charlton Heston, but Exodus will probably not be your grandfather’s Old Testament. Maybe it’s secretly the Prometheus sequel and we’ll learn who the Engineers REALLY are. I’m kind of hoping for that.
I jest, of course. I’m certain that Scott will greatly respect the source material and produce an epic worthy of the name. But is anyone else a little bothered by yet another incredibly Anglicized version of the Moses story? Has a Jewish actor come anywhere near this one? Please let me know, because I really am curious.
Right now production on Exodus is slated to begin in September, from a script by Steve Zaillian (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). Given Scott’s tendencies when he has an epic to make, we might expect to see Exodus sometime in the next forty years.
