By BILL CARTER Published: May 24, 2011
In the beginning, Mark Burnett made a name as the most prominent producer of reality television. Now he’s moving from Omarosa to Moses.
In what Mr. Burnett is calling the “most important project I have ever undertaken,” he has made a deal with the History Channel to mount a 10-hour series based on the stories of the Bible. The project, which History will announce on Tuesday, is expected to be on a similar scale to its most ambitious work, “America: The Story of Us.”
That 12-part series, covering the 400-year history of America and broadcast last year, was closer to the fare typically seen on the History Channel. But Nancy Dubuc, the president of History, said the historical importance of the Bible is beyond dispute.
“This is the most discussed, debated book in the history of mankind,” said Ms. Dubuc, whose channel has tackled other religious projects, like “Jesus: The Lost 40 Days” and “The Real Face of Jesus?”
She added, “What the book has come to represent, and the power of it and the importance of it is itself history.”
“The Bible” will not be a documentary representation; it will be a scripted, acted drama. That represents a departure for Mr. Burnett, the man behind hit shows like “Survivor,” “The Apprentice” (where Omarosa Manigault Stallworth appeared as a contestant) and “The Voice.”
“This is definitely a new area for Mark,” Ms. Dubuc said. “But he is such a powerful visual storyteller. This is a producer you can put any editorial or visual challenge in front of and he rises to it.”
The series will have five two-hour parts, Mr. Burnett said, and each will probably contain two or three biblical stories. He and his team are selecting the stories for the series, he said, which will be in production through next year and shown in 2013.
“Some of the stories are obvious,” Mr. Burnett said, like Noah’s Ark, Exodus and accounts of the birth and death of Jesus. But the project will also cover stories that Mr. Burnett said he was unfamiliar with.
Mr. Burnett, who conceived the project with his wife, the actress Roma Downey (“Touched by an Angel”), said he had been inspired by rewatching, for the first time since childhood, the classic Cecil B. DeMille version of “The Ten Commandments.”
He said that sort of epic production, backed by location shoots and special effects, “used to be the purview of major motion pictures.” Now, he said, “that kind of quality is within the parameters of television.”
Mr. Burnett and Ms. Downey saw an opportunity to make a different mark. “Once in a generation someone gets to breathe new visual life into that book,” Mr. Burnett said.
Neither Mr. Burnett nor Ms. Dubuc would disclose the budget, though Mr. Burnett said it was not his most expensive series. He cited History Channel’s experience with “The Story of Us” and its coming project on Gettysburg.
History’s most recent experience with a scripted drama based on fact was “The Kennedys,” which it dropped in January, saying the mini-series did not live up to its standards of accuracy.
The Bible has its own layers of interpretation, of course, but Ms. Dubuc said the series would not try to impose any kind of historical context to events like the Flood. “It is just the magnitude of the book itself,” she said. “We’re not stepping back to examine anything that could be called a controversy. We are just telling the stories that are in it.”
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