Talk about milking it for every last drop. Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, who produced THE BIBLE for History Channel, are producing a film about Jesus Christ titled SON OF GOD which will be distributed by 20th Century Fox. The kicker? The film is essentially going to be a re-edit of the Jesus scenes from THE BIBLE along with deleted footage that didn’t make it into the 20 hour mini-series.
The miniseries pulled in 15 million viewers per episode and has sold very well on Blu-ray and DVD. NBC is currently working on a follow-up series about The New Testament. SON OF GOD will likely hit theaters in 2014. Since it features no new footage, none of the new film will be shockingly different from what owners of the Blu-ray already have seen.
Christian films have done well at the box office in recent years, making profits off of low budget films. I can understand THE BIBLE pulling in so many viewers since it was on a basic cable channel. I can even understand there being those willing to shell out fifty bucks to own the series, but what value is there is a re-cut theatrical film? Are there that many people who will shell out $12 bucks a person to see a slightly different version of the same story?
Whatever the case, if this ends up being a profitable exercise, expect to see similar things happen to other movies.
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