Darren Aronofsky's NOAH Officially Moving Forward with Russell Crowe
Russell Crowe is officially set to take on the title role in Darren Aronofsky's upcoming film Noah. The movie is a retelling of the legendary Bible story. Crowe might also be joining Liam Neeson, who would be the villain in the story. Christian Bale was attached to the role at one point but had to drop out due to his commitment to the Terrence Malick-directed films Lawless and Knight Of Cups.
According to Deadline, the movie is schedule to start shooting in July. As a big fan of Aronofsky and his films, I'm very excited to see his vision of this biblical tale brought to life. It sounds like it could be incredible.
This is a project that Aronofsky has been very passionate about. He's already made a comic book adaptation. According to the director, the inspiration for Noah came from a 1976 Sunn Pictures documentary called In Search of Noah's Ark that he watched when he was kid, and he is a "huge fan." In a few previous interviews he talked about his vision of Noah, saying,
Noah was the first person to plant vineyards and drink wine and get drunk. It’s there in the Bible - it was one of the first things he did when he reached land. There was some real survivor’s guilt going on there. He’s a dark, complicated character. The tragedies we perform on each other are so well reported. Quite clearly, the planet is dying, and we are dying on it.
I was stunned going back and realizing how dirty some of those stories are. They're not PG in any way. They're all about sleeping with your brother's sister who gives you a child who you don't know. That kind of stuff got censored out of our religious upbringing.
He went on to share his thoughts on the script,
It’s a great script and it’s huge… It’s the end of the world and it’s the second most famous ship after the Titanic. So I’m not sure why any studio won’t want to make it… I think it’s really timely because it’s about environmental apocalypse which is the biggest theme, for me, right now for what’s going on on this planet. So I think it’s got these big, big themes that connect with us. Noah was the first environmentalist. He’s a really interesting character. Hopefully they’ll let me make it.
Here's some other information on the kind of villain that Noah will be facing off against.
...there's a big villain part, gotta have a villain in the story of Noah," Wells added. "Someone who's saying 'Listen, don't listen to him. We're fine! We don't need to build any ark. Don't be so alarmist! Don't be so fundamentalist.' You know? One of those guys. So it sounded like a lot of fun, actually.
Are you looking forward to seeing this movie?