Divine Animation: Bringing Jesus and his story to life
The Cru film ministry is working on a next-generation remake of the iconic 1979 movie seen by millions.
Hair isn’t the biggest problem. But it is a problem when you’re trying to animate Jesus and the 12 disciples plus the Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, and all the people in the crowds in the gospel story.
“Maybe we could make them all bald!” joked Dominic Carola, director of forthcoming animated remake of the iconic 1979 Cru film, Jesus.
“It’d be so much easier if these were clean-shaven people,” he said. “But we can’t do it! That’s not how it was, and we’re leaning into historical accuracy.”
Carola and his team at Premise Entertainment have, in fact, spent so much time on the historical details of the biblical story that their animation studio in Orlando, Florida, has sometimes looked like the world’s nerdiest Bible study.
They’ve done research on the difference between the second floors of first-century homes in Jerusalem and Capernaum. They’ve looked at the exact hue of the colors of the noonday shadows in the Holy Land, the ethnic diversity in the area at the time, and the way the layers of period-accurate clothing would fall on a person’s body.
Not to mention beards and mustaches.
And, of course, getting the look right is just the start for an animated film production.
“We could be on the phone for a week if I were to go through all the challenges this movie presents,” Carola said in an interview with CT. “You’re telling the greatest story ever told. And you have 90 minutes to tell it in.”
Plans for the new film were announced Thursday night at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, and at two simultaneous events in Seoul, South Korea, and Kampala, Uganda. The animated Jesus is scheduled for release …Continue reading…
