The first trailer for a totally necessary Ben-Hur remake has arrived, followed promptly by a debate on its very existence. Jack Huston stars as Judah Ben-Hur, a falsely accused prince banished into slavery for an act of treason he didn’t even commit. Of course, you probably already knew that, as this adaptation of Lew Wallace’s Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ follows the 1959 Charlton Heston classic of the same name.
Wallace’s novel, which was also adapted for cinema in 1925, is believed by many to have achieved the pinnacle book-to-screen translation with the Heston version. That film, widely regarded as a classic, ultimately scored 11 Academy Awards and a nice stack of era-appropriate money. Timur Bekmambetov (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) is directing this latest take on the Wallace novel, from a script by Keith R. Clarke and John Ridley.
"I think the lovely thing is I was seeing it as the big picture," Huston said of the lengthy production, according to the Associated Press. "I was so taken by everything and all the work that everyone had done." Huston also noted that everyone involved with the film wanted "as little CGI as possible" to better honor the source material, a move that may sway a few purists.
Ben-Hur, which also stars Morgan Freeman and Rodrigo Santoro, hits theaters on Aug. 12.
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