Hugh Jackman to produce and star in APOSTLE PAUL Biblical epic

The Bible is back in business. And by “business”, I mean of the “show” variety as Hollywood has seen a resurgence of biblical epics lately. We’ve already seen Darren Aronofsky’s fantastical Noah and Ridley Scott’s version of Moses’ story in Exodus: Gods and Kings, not too mention Scott’s upcoming movie tale about King David. And that’s not even counting the small-budgeted, faith-centric movies like Son of God and Heaven Is for Real.

And now one more big budget production has *cough* clawed its way onto that list, as X-Men actor Hugh Jackman is set to produce and star in the title role of Warner Bros’ Apostle Paul, detailing the life of one the most famous and important figures in Christianity. Deadline reports that Jackman will be co-producing alongside Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, so yes, Wolverine, Batman and Jason Bourne just teamed up to make a Bible story.

That story focusing on one of the most intriguing of all of Jesus’ apostles as Paul was not one of the original dozen but started his life as a Roman tax collector named Saul. As it’s recounted in the Bible, it was only after being blinded by a great light on the road to Damascus – and subsequently having his sight restored by another religious figure named Ananias – that Saul found the Christian faith, and became known as Paul. With his Roman citizenship, Paul became one of Jesus’ most important messengers, traveling far and wide to spread the gospel, including meeting with the Roman rulers at the time.

Over his time as an apostle he founded numerous churches, wrote some of the most influential and revered letters in the Christian faith (some of which were turned into the 14 of the 27 books in the New Testament that he is believed to have penned), and was even imprisoned for his preaching about the miracles being reportedly performed by Jesus. In prison, he was said to have performed miracles of his own, with just his singing and praying supposedly causing causing the ground to shake like an earthquake, throwing open the prison doors and striking the chains from the political prisoners allowing them to just walk free. Now that’s a flashy jail break!

Matt Cook (Triple Nine) has been tapped to turn all this and more into a screenplay, but no director has yet been approached. With the other level of talent that Warner Bros has attached to this, you can be sure that this will be a high profile gig though.

Jackman is currently busy shooting X-Men: Apocalypse and will reportedly only reprise his fan-favourite character as the clawed mutant Wolverine for one more appearance after that – 2017’s Wolverine 3 – before calling it quits on the superhero game. Other than that, he only has his turn as P.T. Barnum in The Greatest Show On Earth in his schedule so he could technically start work on Apostle Paul relatively soon.

Last Updated: April 2, 2015