Joe,
Thank you for all your hard work over the past few months. You’ve captured some amazing
images and we appreciate everything. We’re very lucky to have you on the team bringing this
project to life.
We have appreciated your work ethic and professionalism. However, it’s your heart we have
appreciated the most. In friendship.
Roma and Mark
Roma Downey and Mark Burnett on location in Morocco for ‘The Bible’. Photo by Joe Alblas – Stills Photographer
Executive producer Mark Burnett of “Survivor,” ”The Voice” and “The Celebrity Apprentice” will deliver the biggest project of his TV career next year: “The Bible,” a 10-hour miniseries.
His producing partner is his wife, “Touched by an Angel” star Roma Downey, who plays Mary, the mother of Jesus.
The couple unveiled clips of the made-in-Morocco epic Monday at the International Christian Retail Show in Orlando.
“We don’t go out there waving a flag about our faith and belief,” Burnett said. “We decided to do this, and if we’re going to do it, to do it seriously.”
The plan is for the miniseries to premiere early next year on the History channel. Clips from the recently completed shoot received a standing ovation at the retail show. The scenes focused on Abraham, Moses, Jesus and key moments in the Bible.
In introducing the clips, Downey told the crowd her whole body was shaking. She said they were just back from five months in Morocco.
“It’s a passion project for Mark and myself,” she said. “We managed to get through this job without killing each other.”
Burnett said the project made their faith stronger. “We’ve worked three years on this,” Burnett said. “We love it. We believe in it. There’s a responsibility to the world to bring fresh visual life into this, as you can see in the way we told the political story here of the pressure on Pilate, the pressure on Caiaphas.”
Other scenes were action-packed, and Burnett said he hopes to reach viewers who aren’t familiar with the Bible.
“It’s the most important sacred text,” Burnett said. “Without this Shakespeare wouldn’t have existed, let alone ‘Lord of the Rings’ and ‘Game of Thrones.’ ”
The clips had a gritty realism unlike many biblical epics, and Hans Zimmer (“The Dark Knight Rises”) supplies the musical score.
“A lot of things in the past were donkeys and sandals,” Burnett said. “This is like a feature film. It looks like a $100 million feature film.”
He declined to discuss the budget but said it’s “substantial” although “certainly not $100 million.” The production had three directors and a crew of 200.
Downey is the best-known name in the cast. “‘Touched by an Angel’ still airs every day all over the world,” Burnett said. “Roma gets offers every week. Turns everything down. This is the first role Roma has really stepped up and played.”
She said the casting of Jesus was most important. “We had some actors lined up, but we felt we hadn’t found the perfect actor,” she said. “We put it out in prayer circles to all of our friends and community.”
Shortly thereafter, they met a Portuguese actor — Diogo Morgado — and immediately realized he was perfect casting when they saw him walking toward their house.
Burnett said they consulted experts on every point in the script. “We’re just going down the middle and telling the stories,” he said.
“We had a lot of offers for this. We chose the History channel carefully,” Burnett said. “This is a big thing. This could actually be bigger than Hatfields & McCoys,” which was a ratings sensation for History. “There’s a bigger audience for this,” he added.
He noted that 70 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians but the production also should appeal to Jews, Muslims and anyone who wants to learn about the Bible.
The DVD version, which will contain hours of material not shown on History, could reach an audience worldwide.
“This will go out into corners of the world that we have never heard of,” Downey said. “It’s been just a very humbling, exciting and enormous privilege for us.”
Original content source : blogs.orlandosentinel.com
Here’s what Lena Headey had to say about her role as the villainous Madeline “Ma-Ma” Madrigal in the upcoming Dredd movie also starring Karl Urban (Bones in 2009’s Star Trek):
“She’s a prostitute who then kills her pimp and takes over his drug-running business. And Ma-Ma is a bit of a man-hater. I think of her like an old great white shark who is just waiting for someone bigger and stronger to show up and kill her. She’s ready for it. In fact, she can’t wait for it to happen. And yet no one can get the job done. She’s an addict, so she’s dead in that way, but that last knock just hasn’t come. This big, fat, scarred shark moving through the sea and everyone flees and she’s like, ‘Will someone just have the balls to do it? Please?’”
In the movie Headey’s character runs the so-called Peach Tree City Block gang who comes into conflict with Judge Dredd, the future Mega City One’s top lawman.
Here’s what Headey also had to say about the upcoming movie:
“The world [in the film] feels really British, and I don’t know if that’s because it’s so dirty and dark. And it’s … violent. Just in terms of gunplay, they’re not afraid to show blood and gunshot wounds. And it’s set up in this concrete sort of shanty town – it’s shanty but they’re blocks – concrete favelas.”
The release date for Dredd is September 21st, 2012.
It stars Karl Urban, Olivia Thirlby, Jason Cope, Warrick Grier, Joe Vaz, Langley Kirkwood, Deobia Oparei and Francis Chouler. The movie is directed by Pete Travis from a screenplay by Alex Garland (The Beach, Sunshine).
Original content source : www.scifimoviepage.com
SKY ATLANTIC HD announced The British : Our Story, a bold and celebratory television event bringing to life the events and characters which have shaped the nation’s history, for transmission in early 2012. The series, commissioned by Celia Taylor, Head of Factual & Features at Sky, will be Executive Produced for Nutopia by Ben Goold and Jane Root.
The British : Our Story is a big, ambitious and gripping new series telling the history of Britain and Ireland from the Roman invasion to the Coronation of Elizabeth II and the birth of TV, in 1953. Spanning over two thousand years in seven hours, the series will bring the real and often surprising stories of the unsung heroes of history vividly to life through compelling drama and spectacular CGI which will sweep across Britain to see it change and evolve through time.
A chorus of notable and influential celebrities will give their views on what their nationality means to them.
Elaine Pyke, Head of Sky Atlantic, commented: “Jane Root and Nutopia have an exceptional talent for creating bold, modern history programming which is perfect for Sky Atlantic. And with the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and 2012 Olympics taking place next year, The British : Our Story will celebrate our culture and its roots at a seminal moment in the country’s modern history.”
Celia Taylor, Head of Factual & Features at Sky, commented: “SKY ATLANTIC is a channel dedicated to compelling story-telling and in The British : Our Story we have a series which will present the origin story of our nation and the part it played in the shaping of the modern world in a way which is at once epic, original and stirring.”
Executive Producer and CEO of Nutopia Jane Root added: “It’s incredibly exciting to bring the Nutopia megadoc approach to SKY ATLANTIC – and wonderful to be able to such a high level of resources to telling the story of Britain, something we all hold very dear.”
The British : Our Story is part of Sky’s commitment to increase its investment in original British content by 50% over the next three years. By 2014, Sky expects to invest £600 million a year in British programmes across its portfolio of channels. This commitment follows the success of home-grown content such as entertainment hits GOT TO DANCE, AN IDIOT ABROAD and A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN, dramas such as STRIKE BACK and MAD DOGS, comedies such as TROLLIED and THIS IS JINSY, and factual shows such as ROSS KEMP EXTREME WORLD and the BAFTA-winning documentary FLYING MONSTERS 3D.
The British : Our Story is a Nutopia production for SKY ATLANTIC HD. Celia Taylor is the Executive Producer for Sky. Jane Root and Ben Goold are Executive Producers for Nutopia and Sam Starbuck and Michael Waterhouse are Series Producers
Original content source : tv.fopii.com
After its successful series on the history of America in 2010, television’s History channel is setting its sights even higher.
The network said Tuesday that a 12-hour miniseries, “Mankind the Story of All of Us,” will debut late this year. History, seen in more than 300 million homes worldwide, will offer different versions of the series in different parts of the world, the first time it has ever done that.
“America the Story of Us” hadn’t even concluded when History executives, impressed by its ratings, began talking about what to do next, said Nancy Dubuc, the network’s president and general manager.
“Rather than take a slice of the America story and do something more in depth on that, we decided to go bigger and broader,” she said.
The “America” miniseries was the most-watched special ever on History, with 5.7 million people watching the first episode and nearly 40 million people in total watching some part of it, the Nielsen ratings company said.
The new series starts with the Big Bang and traces the development of humans on a planet where the vast majority of species go extinct, said Jane Root, the project’s executive producer.
Root described it as a “real action-adventure” project, one that encompasses astronomy, geology and other sciences along with history. It will make liberal use of computer-generated recreations in its storytelling, she said.
The series traces the development of tools and the construction of the pyramids. Root said the production tries to make viewers aware of what it felt like, for instance, to set sail for distant lands on a ship when the common belief was the world was flat.
Root said she was surprised to discover the amount of connections among cultures in ancient times, like when Vikings visited China and fought with people in what is now Canada, each before the time of Christopher Columbus.
“We all grow up in a place where we learn just our history,” she said. “You grow up in America, you learn American history. You grow up in France, you learn French history. To try to bring it all together and yet still make it a real exciting story of how humans made it is a real challenge.”
History will offer companion material to schools interested in the project, although Root said it was “very important to us that this wasn’t an educational mission. This is something you’re going to watch like the best of a Hollywood superhero movie.”
About a third of History’s audience is in the United States. Worldwide, History is available in 150 countries, with India the biggest market, and in some 35 languages. Dubuc said the project would be localized in several markets with the inclusion of interviews with local historians.
Airdates have not been set for the series, which will stretch over six days, but it will be within the last three months of 2012, the network said.
Original content source : www.huffingtonpost.com
This heart-warming story finds the tough miniature people inhabiting a recession-hit Hackney house. It’s Christmas distilled.
It is thrilling to find The Borrowers, a classic family drama, at the centre of BBC1′s Boxing Day schedule. It’s exactly what Christmas telly should be about: a charming fantasy reinterpreted for oldies, to be shared with children.
Mary Norton’s engaging 1952 novel, about the tough miniature people who live under the floorboards of a country house, has been adapted a number of times for television and film – perhaps because many of us would like to believe in fairies. In 1992 I watched a fairly faithful and traditional BBC version with my daughters.
What is interesting and fresh about this latest version, (though it comes from the same film makers), is that it is utterly 2011. The Borrowers, who bravely nip upstairs to borrow things from the “human beans”, now inhabit a Hackney Victorian terraced house, where a widowed, job-seeking dad and grumpy grandmother can barely afford Christmas. Recession misery is palpable.
When headstrong borrower Arrietty Clock – here portrayed as a 16-year-old struggling with the rebellious urge to leave home – defies her protective parents and ventures upstairs, to be spotted by motherless boy, James, he seems genuinely isolated.
However, among all the teen hormones there is a lot of slapstick visual fun: the scale of Borrowers to humans is 1:13, and the set designers have been inventive and busy, with champagne corks remodelled as comfy borrower chairs, discarded lollipop sticks as clothes stands, and endless physical hazards. There is a wonderful sequence as Borrower father (Christopher Eccleston) flounders in a tin of Quality Street.
There is also a dash of Misfits, since the director of The Borrowers is Tom Harper, who helped establish the E4 hit and former Misfit Robert Sheehan, plays the tearaway Spiller. Graced with a tattoo (don’t sweat the small stuff), Spiller would be very happy to share a dolls house double bed with Arrietty.
But it is Stephen Fry who steals the show as daft Professor Mildeye, determined to prove the Borrowers, Homo sapiens redactus, exist. The drama does flip into a fantasy action drama at the end, but overall this screen experience is Christmas distilled. Heart-warming.
Original content source : www.guardian.co.uk
Where? 450 West 14th Street (Between Washington
Opening night gala unveiling the exhibit featuring an array of breathtaking photography from the production and rare Biblical artifacts in celebration of the epic miniseries THE BIBLE.
Select artifacts straight from the Vatican, these one-of-a-kind pieces will be on display exclusively for the first time ever in the city of New York.
March 20 through March 27 daily; 10AM to 6PM
Admission is FREE!
RSVP here http://on.fb.me/12Tu30z
Up until now, the year’s big cable-ratings story has been the ever-growing success of zombie drama The Walking Dead on AMC. Sunday night, though, History channel had the highest-rated scripted drama on cable for the year, for the beginning of a story in which only one main character rises from the dead, and that not until nearly the end.
The first two hours of History’s Mark Burnett miniseries adaptation of The Bible scored 13.1 million viewers, more than any fiction cable show of the year–and, as the New York Times notes, dwarfing anything on NBC for the past month. (The biblical epic numbers did not quite match The Walking Dead in viewers aged 18 to 49, the demographic that determines advertising rates, but it did get a healthy 5.6 million.)
Those are the kinds of numbers that get TV executives’ attention, and “attention” in the TV business means copying. Last year, History pulled meganumbers with Hatfields and McCoys; now NBC is developing a Hatfields and McCoys series. So I wouldn’t be surprised to see more religious epics coming to TV–stories aimed, like The Bible miniseries, at the comfort zone of believers. (I haven’t watched the entire History miniseries, but the first two hours were sort of a Picture Bible come to life, with the Old Testament violence dialed up and the Old Testament sex dialed down, and the kind of stiff dialogue that avoids seeming to “disrespect” Biblical figures by making them sound like people rather than animatronic figures.)
So we may see more TV for religious believers as a result of The Bible. What I’d love to see–but am not so sure we will–is more TV about religious believers.
Religious faith (or the passionate lack thereof) plays a huge role in billions of people’s lives. Primetime TV, however, has a habit of dealing with faithful characters badly or–more often–not at all. On the one hand, you have religious characters framed as villains or hypocrites: ABC’s GCB (Good Christian Bitches), wicked-priest figures like Brother Justin on Carnivale, Caleb on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or the pope and cardinals of The Borgias. On the other, you have characters defined broadly in terms of their religion and virtue (say, the Flanders family on The Simpsons). And more widely, TV characters are simply–nothing. They’re not unreligious, necessarily, but their faith, if any, is somewhere offscreen.
What we could use is more TV that treats characters of faith like good TV shows treat any characters: as complicated people, sometimes good, sometimes bad, whose faith is part of them but doesn’t make them exemplary or terrible.
One of the best recent examples–naturally, since it’s one of the best examples of so many things–was Friday Night Lights. Faith mattered to people in Dillon, Texas: they went to church, prayed on problems, played Christian rock in their garages. It didn’t magically fix anything, nor did it make the people of Dillon better or worse than people anywhere else, but the show took it seriously, and matter-of-factly, as a major part of its characters’ worldviews.
Cable may have a little more leeway in treating religion with nuance, even if it doesn’t always. Big Love may have taken criticism from Mormons for its depiction of polygamy, but it was also a rich, multifaceted look at the many ways in which religion affected its characters’ lives, for good and ill. Yes, Juniper Creek was afflicted with false prophets, but in the show’s central family, each spouse–even Bill, even when he was behaving contemptibly–was driven at root by the desire to come closer to God and to meaning. In a very different way, Game of Thrones has dealt with how religion affects war, politics and its characters’ outlooks–though so far, the series has lost some of the detail of the source books. Enlightened is not about organized religion per se, but treats spirituality with respect without pandering to it.
On network TV, some of the more interesting recent storylines about faith have been happening at the margins of The Good Wife–one of the more “cable-like” broadcast shows to begin with. The protagonist, Alicia Florrick, is an open atheist–even more of a rarity than an avowed believer on TV–and this became an issue recently when she refused to hide her disbelief to help Peter’s gubernatorial campaign. At the same time, her teenage daughter has been drawn to Christianity, and the way the show has handled Alicia’s reaction–not preachily, but as a story about a parent working to accept her daughter’s separate identity–has been exemplary without being showy.
These are still exceptions, though. (There are a few more depictions of the faithful in reality TV, especially on cable–Sister Wives, the Duggars–though All-American Muslim showed that even for cable reality that is not without risk.) The reason TV series should have religious characters and take them seriously is the same reason they should have racial and cultural diversity: not as an act of charity, not to pander to demographics, but because it makes for better stories. People who believe things are interesting. People wrestling with the big questions are interesting. And TV shows that depict actual lived life–with characters who are specific rather than generic–are interesting.
Of course, programmers often read “interesting” as “dangerous,” especially when it comes to religion. (And for that matter, when it comes to race, as Alyssa Rosenberg has lately pointed out when critiquing the “color-blind” approach to writing.) If The Bible keeps its ratings up, I’d expect more religious spectacles in the future. I wouldn’t be surprised, either, to see more religious-flavored genre entertainments too, even though ABC failed with the Da Vinci Code-like Zero Hour. The Walking Dead’s Robert Kirkman, for instance, is now working on a series about exorcism.
History’s Bible, in other words, is probably going to result in more religious drama that’s larger-than-life. What TV could really use, though, is more religious drama that’s life-sized.
Original content source : entertainment.time.com
The networks might be struggling on Sunday nights but not basic cable’s the History Channel. The miniseries beat everything in sight Sunday night with record ratings for “The Bible.”
I think this quote from executive producers Roma Downey and Mark Burnett might be a little over the top: “Today, more people are discussing God’s chosen people — Moses and Abraham — in one day than ever before,” Downey and Burnett are quoted as saying in a History Channel statement.
Still, you have to be impressed by the numbers.
Here’s the release:
Over two telecasts on premiere night, THE BIBLE averaged 14.8 million viewers, 5 million Adults 18-49 and 5.6 million Adults 25-54. In the 8-10pm premiere 13.1 million total viewers flocked to THE BIBLE, including 4.6 million Adults 25-54. THE BIBLE is the #1 cable entertainment telecast of the year. Leading into the premiere HISTORY.com had it best day ever in its history, and THE BIBLE trended as #1 on Twitter with celebrities and influencers tweeting their own personal tune-in messages.
Says Nancy Dubuc, President, Entertainment and Media, A+E Networks, “The success of THE BIBLE has catapulted HISTORY into one of the most powerful brands across media landscape and we could not be more thrilled and more proud. We are the #1 cable entertainment telecast of the year to date! Leading into the premiere we had the best day ever on History.com, and THE BIBLE trended #1 on Twitter. Clearly there is a nationwide groundswell that was waiting for this moment. We launched an incredible and coordinated campaign – HISTORY worked hand in hand with Roma and Mark and their talented team. An enormous debt of gratitude goes out to everyone and the amazing effort put forth to drive us to this amazing win. Clearly the passion for this project has resonated with our viewers and across the nation. We are thrilled, and the story is only just beginning.”
“We could not be more thrilled with this out of the gate success of THE BIBLE on HISTORY,” said Executive Producers Roma Downey and Mark Burnett. “The world is watching right now and we are incredibly humbled by the reaction to the series. This #1 series is a tribute to all those who have helped us to spread the Word. Ultimately THE BIBLE will be seen and felt by billions around the globe. We have to thank Nancy Dubuc and her HISTORY team for stepping up and joining us on this amazing journey – together we are now able to share this most sacred text that will continue to challenge and inspire.
“Today, more people are discussing God’s chosen people – Moses and Abraham – in one day than ever before. We’ve been working on this project for the past four years now, and are deeply honored to be given this once in a generation opportunity to breathe new visual life into the Bible’s profound stories. The Bible gives meaning and purpose to billions of people around the world. We believe the success of the series will spark the curiosity of billions more,” continued Roma and Mark.
THE BIBLE, premiering every Sunday on HISTORY over the next four Sundays, culminating on Easter, was created and executive produced by renowned producer Mark Burnett (The Voice, Survivor, The Apprentice, Shark Tank) and Roma Downey (Touched by an Angel). The series, a landmark television event, combines one of the greatest collections of stories ever assembled with live action and state-of-the-art CGI. The series is narrated by Emmy award-winning actor/vocalist Keith David (Mr & Mrs Smith; Platoon; Crash) and features a musical score by the world renowned Grammy and Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer. In April, The Bible series will arrive on Blu-ray and DVD with hours of exclusive special features and extras making it a must-own for every home. A book series by Mark and Roma is currently available in stores.
Leading the outstanding international cast is Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated actress and series’ co-executive producer Roma Downey, who plays Mother Mary. Joining her are Portuguese TV star Diogo Morgado as Jesus, as well as an array of acclaimed UK-based actors including Sean Teale (Skins), David Rintoul (The Iron Lady, My Week with Marilyn), Amber Rose Revah (The Borgias), Peter Guinness (an accomplished long time film/theatre actor), Greg Hicks (one of the UK’s best-known Shakespearean actors), and Simon Kunz (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Parent Trap, Matchpoint).
From Genesis to Revelation, HISTORY will illuminate the Bible, re-telling the stories as they unfold and revealing new insights into these iconic characters in context of the Bible. The series will feature some of the most famous stories ever written from Noah’s Ark and the Exodus to Daniel in the Lion’s Den to the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.
THE BIBLE series is produced for HISTORY by Lightworkers Media and Hearst Entertainment & Syndication. Executive Producers are Mark Burnett, Roma Downey and Richard Bedser. Executive Producers for HISTORY are Dirk Hoogstra and Julian P. Hobbs. THE BIBLE is distributed by One Three Media, Inc.
Original content source : www.baltimoresun.com
To accomplish some of special stills on this project such as the image above we used an old
illusionary technique, which is sometimes still used in theatre productions.
We had our stunt double, Paul Hampshire (featured below) suit up in a duplicate costume that Karl Urban (Dredd) was wearing. We then placed Paul in the adjoining room, striking a similar pose and had our gaffer, Thomas Neivelt project a lamp onto him casting a mirror shadow image onto the adjacent wall.
Paul Hampshire ~ Stunt Double