Tweet
A few months ago Warner Bros. announced they would be making a Biblical epic called Pontius Pilate, and picked up a script from screenwriter Vera Blasi (Tortilla Soup, Woman On Top and Emperor). It's being reported that Brad Pitt is looking to take on the lead role in the film and play the man who sent Jesus Christ to his death. I like Pitt as an actor, but it's hard for me to see him in a role like this. If he ends up taking the role, it will be interesting to see how he approaches it.
Deadline got a hold of the script, explained the story, and talked about the script saying "the evolution of Lucius Pontius Pilate from the sensitive son of a Roman Knight into a ferocious soldier whose warrior exploits make him a general and puts him on a political track under the Roman Emperor Tiberius. Promised a military governorship in Egypt, Pilate is instead assigned by Tiberius to become the prefect of Judea, at a time when Jerusalem was a cauldron of religious tensions between various factions of the Jewish faith. Pilate veers from the political fast track into the express lane to hell and historical infamy. 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."
