Old Testament Film Next for Gibson?

While still officially attached to the fourth film in the Mad Max franchise, Mel Gibson has dropped hints recently that his next movie could be an adaptation of an Old Testament story:

The first rumor flitting through the evangelical world is that the filmmaker intends to plow the profits from The Passion into a movie about the central characters of the holiday of Hanukkah, fighters called the Maccabees. Their story is told in sacred writings of the biblical period, although the two books of the same name are not officially a part of either testament.

While not traditionally a major holiday in Judaism, Hanukkah, particularly in America has become a secularized celebration, due in no small part to its frequent proximity to Christmas. Nonetheless, there's yet to be a wide-release Hanukkah film (and, no, Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights does not count). In fact, a visual interpretation of the Maccabees guerilla warfare against the far superior Syrian army could even transcend the religious-film barrier into an all-out action epic.

The second rumor is even more intriguing:

Last week, the American-born Israeli educator Yossi Katz suggested that Gibson's next film should be a dramatization of the Bar Kochba Revolt of A.D. 132-135. This rebellion took place a century after Jesus' death, and 60 years after a failed uprising against the Roman occupation that led to half a million Jewish deaths and the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem.

If Gibson were to follow through and film either one of these stories of heroic Jews, all but his most virulent critics would no doubt temper or even rescind the cries of anti-Semitism that have been leveled at him for The Passion.

Article Author: Scott Pepper

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