Holy Moses! The rise of the Godbuster

Watch out for the Godbusters! Coming soon to a major studio’s summer release schedule near you, writes Camo.

After the success of the 2013 TV miniseries The Bible – with each original airing episode attracting more than 10 million viewers on USA cable alone and the series having more than 100 million viewers worldwide – and the planned follow up series The Son of God, and AD: Beyond the Bible, major film studios are about to unleash the 'Godbuster' to cinemas in 2014.

Russell Crowe’s Noah is first off the line.

Written by Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel (The Wrestler, Black Swan), directed by Aronofsky, released by Paramount pictures, and also starring Anthony Hopkins, Emma Watson and Ray Winstone, it is the first in a double shot of big studio bible bashings about to hit movie goers. Noah had its premiere in Mexico on Monday 10 March to mixed reviews and obligatory bans in some Islamic states, because it is a fictional portrayal of a prophet. It is scheduled for wider release after March 28, allowing people enough time to check out the grainy pirate camera version online before deciding to pay for it*.

* The author wishes to emphasise the insertion of the previous phrase regarding pirate movies was done for comedic value only, and is not intended as a critique of the ingenuity and creativity behind the many good people in the film pirating industry)#

# The author also wishes to emphasise that of course you should respect and pay for intellectual property... such as this article, for example. Pay me.

Second up will be Batman/Patrick Bateman starring as Moses in Ridley Scott’s Exodus, and with a scheduled release date of 12 December 2014, it's clearly aimed directly at the Jewish voters for the Academy Awards**##.

**## — ALRIGHT! I mean it is clearly aimed at the entire awards season and you know what else? Simply saying there is a strong Jewish influence in American show business is neither anti-Semitic nor is it not a fact. Samuel Goldwyn, Marcus Loew and Louis Mayer formed MGM, The Warner brothers were Jewish, Cecil B DeMille, Paramount pictures, Woody Allen, Judd Apatow, Jon Stewart — the list is long for a reason, theatre and show business has been part of European Jewish tradition for hundreds of years. It should be celebrated. Less than a century ago someone tried to remove those people from the world. Nowadays, Inglorious Basterds, featuring Jewish Eli Roth playing a Jewish soldier – ein Golem ist! – who kills Germans with a baseball bat took $4.2 million on opening weekend in Germany, beaten only by France and UK for non-USA releases…

Where was I?

Oh yeah. Two big studios are throwing two big buckets of money at two big bible stories with two big headline actors in two big experiments of 2014.

So what, you may ask?

So Daredevil! I say. So Elektra! So Ghostrider! So any of the calamitous and spectacularly rubbish superhero genre films that followed X-Men in 2000 and Spiderman in 2002. They’ve already worn out the Raimi-Maguire Spiderman series and restarted it with a fourth one which is a new first one! Blade got THREE versions! How?! They even got Ryan Reynolds to be in one of them. They simply refuse to stop making Underworld movies! Did I mention Daredevil and Elektra?

This is coming. The Godbuster is coming and it will begat many offspring.

And for every good idea that is well made with decent actors and proper direction (imagine if JJ Abrams did a trilogy on the life of King David, ending with Solomon played by James Franco going totally mad for the vast sexuality of a Sofía Vergara/Queen of Sheba), there will be an Ashton Kutcher as Jonah, or a Chris Hemsworth in Samson (actually, do that. Since I know all the influential studios are big fans of my articles – make that happen).