Paramount Developing a Remake of THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 Biblical epic The Ten Commandments is one of Paramount Pictures' most prized achievements. It won an Oscar for Visual Effects, was one of the most financially successful movies of the time, and was largely beloved by audiences and critics. I was a studio page at Paramount a few years ago, and the studio still (rightly) has a lot of love for The Ten Commandments. It's a big landmark in the company's history.

The Tracking Board reports that Paramount is developing a remake of the classic with Disruption Entertainment.

The film will, not surprisingly, center around the Exodus story of Moses, and his leading the Jewish people out of Egypt, freeing them from the oppressive rule of the Pharaoh Ramses. Producers are eyeing a writer-director who can give a different take than previous incarnations of the timeless tale.

The idea of a remake of this movie isn't inherently bad — after all, the 1956 DeMille version was a remake of his own 1923 version of the same story — but considering we JUST SAW this story on the big screen in Ridley Scott's Exodus: Gods and Kings, the timing seems extremely questionable. That film only pulled in $65 million domestically but earned over $200 million in foreign countries, so maybe the executives are thinking there's more money to be had from the global markets...but I can't shake the fact that Exodus JUST CAME OUT, so why would people want to watch this story again so soon? How different can any version of this story possibly be? It's not like the effects are going to be drastically different than what we saw in Exodus (improved technology had to be part of the reason Scott was interested in retelling the tale), so I have no idea what they think will justify this remake.

What do you think?