(Image courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox.) Joel Edgerton as Rameses and Christian Bale as Moses. You pitched your ideas to Peter Chernin of Chernin Entertainment and he was immediately taken with your concepts for a remake of the story. But we had always been drawn to the Moses story, and saw it as an opportunity to take a marquee character that had 100-percent market penetration in terms of name awareness, and reintroduce him to audiences at a time when the technology of filmmaking could at last live up to the scope and spectacle of the biblical story. While they thought we did a super job on the Moby Dick movie, they hesitated about a mega-expensive updating of The Ten Commandments - as it was seen as “sacred cinematic ground” - and they passed. We sold an adaptation of Moby Dick to Universal (with Timur Bekmambetov directing) and then pitched Exodus to Universal. In 2007 we stopped writing comedy and focused on setting up only drama projects. We had been working in drama and comedy since about 1995, and with few exceptions (a teeny-tiny polish on Ransom a rewrite of a horror film called Wrong Turn), we never saw any of our drama stuff produced. What led you to pitch a new screen version of the Hebrews’ flight from Egypt? You two have established reputations as talented writers of screen comedy, creating the storylines for Accepted (2006) and Tower Heist (2011). In this digital Q&A conducted over email earlier in November, Collage and Cooper together answer my questions about their impressive screenwriting careers, and their involvement with the retelling of this dramatic saga. Partners Collage and Cooper, since graduating from U-M, have earned writing credits for nearly 50 film and television projects, with more underway. It should be noted that the 1960 Otto Preminger film titled Exodus, adapted from the Leon Uris novel of the same title, focused on events that led up to the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. With an iconic cast led by Charlton Heston as Moses (with three-month-old son Fraser Heston as baby Moses) and Yul Brynner as Rameses II, DeMille once again displayed his mettle for unparalleled showmanship long before the magic of computer-generated imagery – CGI – would make its mark on the cinematic landscape. The Ten Commandments of 1956 remains one of the most popular and lucrative motion pictures ever made. Theatergoers in 1956 were dazzled by DeMille’s pillar of fire, the burning bush, the divine plagues, the parting of the Red Sea (again), and the reception by Moses of the tablets that contained the Ten Commandments. DeMille also expanded the scope of production details and special effects wizardry. That modern component was dropped from the 1956 film for a more detailed historical treatment of the Moses-exodus drama. The original movie arrived in two narrative parts - the first about the Moses-led exodus, and the second a lengthy contemporary story in which two men discuss their reactions to the Ten Commandments. DeMille production of The Ten Commandments in 1956. Perhaps most impressive was the legendary “parting of the Red Sea” effect, enhanced by the application of a double-negative Technicolor process - still in the formative stages of color development at the time.Ĭharlton Heston embodied Moses in the Cecil B. Meticulous production details, the precise orchestration of a huge cast, and its innovative special effects set the bar incredibly high for subsequent filmmakers. The 1923 silent version established a landmark moment in cinema history. Two earlier films titled The Ten Commandments (1923, 1956) were the work of Hollywood’s “showmanship” director Cecil B. Scott’s film represents the third major screen account of the Moses-led exodus story. Collage and Cooper pitched the storyline that would become Exodus: Gods and Kings. Scott’s latest creation arrives in theaters with more U-M connections, this time in the screenwriting team of Bill Collage, AB ’92, and Adam Cooper, AB ’93. The film’s special effects team, supervised by U-M alumnus John Nelson, ’76, took home an Oscar in that category. 12.Įxodus: Gods and Kings is the latest epic by director Ridley Scott, whose historical drama Gladiator (2000) won the Academy Award for Best Picture of the Year.Ĭritics praised Gladiator for its spectacular battle scenes on the field and in the Colosseum. An alumni adventure of biblical proportionsĪ new screen version chronicling the Hebrews’ exodus from Egypt arrives in theaters Dec.
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