The Bible in film

They contain sweeping, but relatively straightforward, narratives of good versus evil, and feature crowd-pleasing battles, sword fights, natural disasters, and miracles.

His 1923 silent version of The Ten Commandments (1923) included spectacular special effects for the parting of the Red Sea.

[3] MGM's 1925 silent-era Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, starring Ramon Novarro was the most expensive film of its time.

After the war, some of Hollywood's highest grossing films were religious epics produced as vehicles for its biggest stars.

[4] Samson and Delilah was the biggest moneymaking movie of 1949 and is considered the picture that sparked the biblical-epic film craze of the 1950s.

According to author Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, in the 1950s and 1960s, during the era of the production code, "the most acceptable cinematic path for movies to incorporate sex and violence was the biblical epic".

Mel Gibson's controversial The Passion of the Christ (2004), an interpretation of the last 12 hours in the life of Jesus, was extremely profitable, grossing $370 million (domestic).

Epics such as Sodom and Gomorrah, The Story of Ruth, David and Goliath, Solomon and Sheba, and Esther and the King dominated the box office.

Forty-seven years later, Hearst Corporation and producers Roma Downey and Mark Burnett created their own reimagining of the story via a TV miniseries, The Bible, thus finally fulfilling DeLaurentiis' original 1966 vision.

At this time there were some successful films that involved Jesus, but they put him at a distance from the central characters and were based on novels rather than the Bible.

Film versions of the Book of Revelation such as The Late Great Planet Earth and The Seventh Sign were made, which had been uncommon in an earlier era.

The success of The Passion of the Christ led to new Bible films being commissioned including Mary, Son of Man, Color of the Cross, The Ten Commandments, and Nativity, all of which were scheduled for a 2006 release.