Paul Verhoeven, the guy who got Sharon Stone to show off her crotch in Basic Instinct, the director who brought you Elizabeth Berkley naked in Showgirls, invisible raping in Hollow Man, and severed body parts, gore, and buckets of human blood in movies like Starship Troopers, Total Recall, and Robocop may be about to completely outdo himself. He’s making a movie about Jesus.
The rumor comes from the frequently unreliable guys at WENN, so don’t believe it until someone else confirms it, but it is true that there has long been talk of Paul working on such a film. The working title once rumored for it was Christ, the Man, and apparently there’s now some movement on the whole thing again. The current incarnation is supposed tell Jesus’s story as if he’s not a god made man flesh but instead just a dude. Verhoeven plans to completely ignore all the superstitious mumbo jumbo surrounding him and focus on Big J as a guy navigating the complex political and social landscape of his time.
It seems that the boobs, guns, and gore director has an insatiable interest in the Christ figure. He’s a member of the Jesus Seminar, a group of scholars who use historical methods to determine who Jesus was. One problem though. He’s afraid it’ll get him lynched.
He reportedly tells Empire Magazine, "My scriptwriter told me not to do the movie in the United States because they (Christians) might shoot me. It's not a joke at all. I took that very seriously. So I took his advice and decided to write a book about it first."
While there’s no accounting for crazies, he might be overreacting a bit. Granted, drunk and racist though he is most Christians would probably prefer to have Mel Gibson handling all their Jesus filming, but odds are that as long as he brings a few armed guards and can endure massive protests Paul would have no problem. This is still America after all, not the Taliban. If he really is as serious as he sounds, look for a book by Paul Verhoeven being burned in the public square some time soon. If the burnings go well, expect a movie.
