A new Hollywood attempt at selling Jesus

At a Television Critics Association press tour held in Los Angeles, National Geographic Channel revealed a behind-the-scenes trailer for its upcoming telepic Killing Jesus, an adaptation of Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard’s best-selling biography of Jesus. As Nat Geo announced the new project, which airs sometime in spring 2015, they flashed a screenshot of Jesus with a crown of thorns digging into His forehead. The crowd burst into laughter.

But when Muslim-raised actor Haaz Sleiman, who plays Jesus, shared his admiration for Jesus during a follow-up panel, the audience’s attitude took a slight shift. As he talked about his initial reaction to being cast as Jesus, Sleiman apologized with a chuckle, “This is so cheesy, but I think cheesy is okay. … The first thing I felt was love. I really just felt love in the moment because Jesus had influenced me heavily prior to getting this part.” His mother, a Muslim, also had a positive reaction, Sleiman said. When he called her to tell her the news, she said, “Bless you for playing Jesus, peace be upon him.”

From the back of the room, I saw reporters nodding their heads and murmuring their approvals, clearly moved. Finally, here’s a Christian-friendly sentiment the secular press can endorse, a ringing hope for interreligious harmony. In an industry where Christian values and beliefs are increasingly mocked and hated, Sleiman’s view of Jesus seems gracious and generous, particularly given his traditional Muslim background.

Later, during a one-on-one interview, Sleiman leaned forward with eyes shining and told me how he met a spiritual mentor during a “pretty dark” place in his life. This friend liberally quoted Jesus, among other religious figures, and introduced him to “the ideas” of Jesus, such as “love your neighbors as yourself” and “love your enemies”—teachings that have shaped him in the past decade, he said. Sleiman is an excellent actor, but I doubt he was faking his passionate respect for the humanity of Jesus, even if he totally missed His divinity.

Compare Sleiman’s response to that of actor Christian Bale, who played Moses in Exodus. At a question-and-answer session, Bale called Moses “likely schizophrenic” and “one of the most barbaric individuals that I’ve ever read about in my life.” That’s after the uproar over Noah, a big-budget film that diverged from the Biblical narrative and turned Noah into a neurotic, radical environmentalist. No wonder many Christians narrow their eyes in weary distrust at the influx of “faith-based” Hollywood productions; persecution rarely takes the form of physical violence in America, but of both outright and subtle derision or distortion.

Still, Hollywood studios and TV channels try hard to woo both the faith-based crowd and secular viewers. It’s been a tough tug-of-war since each side has conflicting desires and expectations of what they consider a worthy film, and both sides are vigilant about hidden agendas.

How will viewers respond to Killing Jesus, the third installment to Nat Geo’s widely successful Killing series? The first two installments, Killing Kennedy and Killing Lincoln, both based on O’Reilly’s books, earned the largest number of total viewers in history for the channel. But, given its religious sensitivities, Killing Jesus makes a trickier sell to both Christian and non-Christian viewers.

If the movie is faithful to the book, the film will focus on the historical period of Jesus, a “phenomenal guy” whose death resulted from “political and other religious forces coalescing against him,” said screenwriter Walon Green in response to a media question about how the filmwill differ from The Passion of the Christ or The Greatest Story Ever Told.

Critics expressed skepticism that Killing Jesus would appeal to either the Christian or secular crowd: Is this movie going to be praised from the pulpit? How would you pitch this to a non-Christian viewer? And one reporter asked cheekily, why isn’t Bill O’Reilly present today? Is he afraid of the press? Will the fact that one of the executive producers is O’Reilly—a right-wing, Roman Catholic Fox News host—drive away viewers?

The answers were the same tired, diplomatic lines all Hollywood producers and actors recite: Producers promised to keep the “authenticity” of the original story while “humanizing” biblical characters, in this case Jesus and often-villified characters such as King Herod and Judas. Kelsey Grammer, who plays King Herod, said, “Any time you go and humanize a Bible story, I think it would win praise from every part of the Christian world,” because Christians “find increased modern relevance is desirable.”

But is it relevance or a reconstruction of the narrative of Jesus? If the conclusion to Jesus’ teachings is mere sanitized, feel-good, spiritual “Kumbaya,” which was what I sensed at the panel, then Killing Jesus may have just killed the gospel—the whole purpose of Jesus’ life and death on the cross.