Warner Bros. is joining forces with controversial filmmaker Mel Gibson to develop a movie about the Jewish hero Judah Maccabee according to The Hollywood Reporter . Gibson will produce through his Icon Productions and will decide whether he’ll act in or direct the film once the script is completed.
Although Gibson was accused of anti-Semitism by a number of Jewish leaders when he released The Passion of the Christ in 2004 and then again in his drunken rant to an officer in 2006 when getting pulled over for a DUI, Gibson has wanted to tackle a movie about Maccabee for more than a decade. Maccabbee, considered one of the great warriors in Jewish history, led a popular revolt against he Seleucid king Antiochus IV, seizing Jerusalem and reconsecrating the Temple, an event remembered by the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.
Joe Eszterhas, writer of blockbusters such as Flashdance, Jagged Edge and Basic Instinct, is now attached as the screenwritter and has been talking with Gibson for about a year about the project. Eszterhas did a lot of his own research on the subject before embarking on a screenplay.
The Anti-Defamation League has officially responded to the news that Mel Gibson and Warner Bros. are cooperating to make a film based on the life of Judah Maccabee. Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti Defamation League, who criticized Gibson’s controversial 2004 film The Passion of the Christ, issued a statement to The Hollywood Reporter in response to the news.
“Judah Maccabee deserves better. He is a hero of the Jewish people and a universal hero in the struggle for religious liberty. It would be a travesty to have his story told by one who has no respect and sensitivity for other people’s religious views,”
Foxman also said that if Gibson made that movie, “We’ll lose. He’ll write his own history. I would prefer to leave the fate of Jewish history and Hollywood to Steven Spielberg. The Maccabees…are our sacred history.
"Mel Gibson has shown nothing but antagonism and disrespect to Jews. First of all there were the anti-Semitic remarks he made, his portrayal of Jews in The Passion of Christ. I’m talking about those Jews who did not accept Christ, they were all portrayed as idiots, buffoons or people who were tyrants, with a very unfair portrayal. He’s had a long history of antagonism with Jews. Casting him as a director or perhaps as the star of Judah Maccabee is like casting Madoff to be the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, or a white supremacist as trying to portray Martin Luther King Jr. It's simply an insult to Jews."
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