Tom Cruise Gets Biblical With 'Methuselah'

Hollywood wants that faith-based money, and studios are willing to burn comic-book-movie-sized budgets, even if the results don’t always work out (see this summer’s colossal flop, “Ben-Hur,” for example). So it’s why they’ll keep a Bible on the bedside table, because even something like “Exodus: Gods And Kings,” which tanked domestically, earned over $200 million overseas. Still, this latest development does have us scratching our heads a bit.

Tom Cruise is set to star in Warner Bros.‘ “Methuselah,” which will be helmed by “Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales” co-director Joachim Rønning. Zach Dean (“Deadfall“) wrote the latest draft of the script, but as per usual with anything involving Cruise, the project will go out to new writers to craft something more in line with his sensibilities. And that’s fine, but the thing is that Tom Cruise is really good playing variations on Tom Cruise for the most part, but doing this kind of swords-and-sandals Bible thing seems out of his nature. But maybe he’ll surprise us all.

READ MORE: The 10 Best And 5 Worst Tom Cruise Performances

For Warner, this means a step closer to project they’ve been working on forever being realized. At one point many moons agoJames Watkins (“The Woman In Black”) was attached to direct with a script by Arash Amel (“Grace Of Monaco“) but obviously, that didn’t go anywhere. As for the character, we most recently saw the character portrayed with delightful eccentricity by Anthony Hopkins in Darren Aronofsky‘s “Noah.” (By the way, in this incarnation of the character, they’ll be leaning on the interpretation that the man who lived to nearly 1,000 years old didn’t age).

No word yet on when “Methuselah” might roll, but it’s probably not for a while, as Cruise will be spending a good chunk of next year shooting the new “Mission: Impossible” movie.