There's less than two months before Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods And Kings arrives, and new posters have landed to keep that fact in our brains and warn us of the wrath of the almighty (that'd be Sir Ridders) if we should forget.
Scott's latest charts the relationship between Moses (Christian Bale) and Pharaoh Ramses (Joel Edgerton), one that is quickly filled with demands, plagues, suffering and a very long walk. Yes, it’s the old story of Moses demanding that Pharaoh let his people go so he can lead them to the Promised Land. Pharaoh, of course, has no intention of releasing his largely slave workforce, and the stage is set for an epic showdown.
Scott has opted for old-school scale on this one, constructing massive sets for his Egyptian tale, which pumps up the story to match the ambition of the designs. There remain concerns and complaints about the casting, with some worried that the leads – great actors though they might be – don’t exactly resemble anyone from the time and place. Scott told Yahoo in Australia about his reasons for the cast: "Egypt was – as it is now – a confluence of cultures, as a result of being a crossroads geographically between Africa, the Middle East and Europe. We cast major actors from different ethnicities to reflect this diversity of culture, from Iranians to Spaniards to Arabs. There are many different theories about the ethnicity of the Egyptian people, and we had a lot of discussions about how to best represent the culture."
With Ben Kingsley, Aaron Paul, Sigourney Weaver, Indira Varma and John Turturro among the cast, Exodus: Gods And Kings is set to arrive here on December 26. You can read more about it in the new issue of Empire, which hits shelves on Thursday.