Just a few quick recent news items with a religious hook.
1. The Toronto Star spoke to Rooney Mara, who is currently promoting three films at the Toronto International Film Festival (Una, Lion and The Secret Scripture), and along the way it mentions that Mary Magdalene starts shooting next week. Mara, who grew up Catholic but isn’t religious, was reportedly reluctant to star in the film at first, but she says she found the script “revelatory” and “very different from what I grew up learning about her.” Hopefully this means Mary won’t be a prostitute this time.
2. Five months ago, I mentioned that Steven Spielberg was planning on making The Kidnapping Of Edgardo Mortara, a film about a pivotal clash between Jews and Catholics in 19th-century Italy. Now comes word that Harvey Weinstein is planning to produce his own movie about that story, which might be directed by Baltasar Kormákur (Everest). Spielberg’s film will star Mark Rylance as Pope Pius IX, while the Weinstein/Kormákur film may star Robert De Niro in that role. The two movies might not be entirely redundant, though; The Hollywood Reporter says the two projects “likely will focus on different years in Mortara’s life.” As ever, we shall see.
3. Deadline reports that CBS has bought a comedy series based on A.J. Jacobs’ book The Year of Living Biblically. The series is being produced by Johnny Galecki (an actor on The Big Bang Theory) and written by Patrick Walsh (2 Broke Girls).
— The photo above shows Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily in Pan (2015).
