After losing its love interest to Wonder Woman’s busy schedule, MGM’s new version of Ben-Hur found itself in a pretty dark place. Ben-Hur was lost and alone, with nobody to turn to for emotional support. Or so it thought! Then, like so many teens who get suckered in with cool talk about skateboarding and not having sex until marriage, Ben-Hur discovered a man with long hair and some radical ideas about helping people and loving everybody. That’s right, we’re talking about a little guy named Jesus fuckin’ Christ.
This isn’t the same Jesus you’ve read about in books like The Bible and The Da Vinci Code, though. This is a real, living guy that you can touch and everything. OK, you probably can’t touch him, because he’s just going to be a character in a movie, but you could touch him in theory. The point is that MGM’s new Ben-Hur has found its Jesus, and it’s Brazillian actor Rodrigo Santoro. In case anyone needs a refresher on irony, Santoro is probably best known for playing Xerxes in the 300 movies, which means he’s going from playing a guy who declared himself to be a god, covered himself in gold, rode around on a giant chair carried by slaves, and killed everybody he possibly could, to playing Jesus.
The new Ben-Hur will star Boardwalk Empire’s Jack Huston as Ben-Hur himself, with Morgan Freeman in the Morgan Freeman role, Doctor Doom as the villain, and Homeland’s Nazanin Boniadi taking over Gal Gadot’s spot as the female lead. Timur Bekmambetov is directing. Original star Charlton Heston is not expected to make any sort of cameo appearance.