Darren Aronofsky's NOAH gets a Release Date
Darren Aronofsky's epic biblical tale of Noah is scheduled to start shooting in July, and Paramount Pictures has given it the official released date of March 28th, 2014. Russell Crowe will play the legendary prophet in the film. The original script written by Aronofsky and Ari Handel is being re-written by John Logan (Gladiator, The Aviator). I'm looking forward to seeing Aronofsky's vision of this story brought to life, here's what he had to say about it in a recent statement,
Since I was a kid, I have been moved and inspired by the story of Noah and his family's journey. The imaginations of countless generations have sparked to this epic story of faith. It's my hope that I can present a window into Noah's passion and perseverance for the silver screen.
I'm sure the director will do a fine job brining this story to life. This will be his most epic film to date, and I'm excited to see what he ends up giving us.
As we previously reported, 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.