The King of Kings is set to rise next Easter.
Blue Harbor Entertainment has acquired North American rights to the faith-based animated movie and intends to release it in theaters over Easter holiday. It did not reveal an exact date, though the holiday falls on the April 18-20 weekend next year.
The film is loosely based on “The Life of Our Lord,” a posthumously published Charles Dickens short story that focuses on the life and times of Jesus Christ. Kenneth Branagh voice stars as Dickens, while Oscar Isaac voices Jesus. Ben Kingsley, Forest Whitaker, Uma Thurman, Mark Hamill, Pierce Brosnan and Roman Griffin Davis also voice star.
It centers on a multidimensional adventure Dickens goes on with his son, Walter. Along the way, “the master storyteller engages his youngest son’s vivid imagination with the fascinating life of Jesus, his well-known trials and tribulations, and his notable colleagues and foes,” according to the logline.
Seong-ho “Jay” Jang directs The King of Kings, which comes from the South Korea-based animation house Mofac Animation.
Faith-based properties have had luck at the box office, in part due to their ability to activate their motivated audiences. Angel Studios, which distributed Sound of Freedom, employs a pay-it-forward model in which people can buy tickets for others.
Jang notes that Blue Harbor “proved to understand the intrinsic value of this film and its faith-based engagement opportunities, and offered a creative, filmmaker-friendly business model that would provide significant outreach to families, animation fans, and the awaiting embrace of hundreds of millions of Christians across the nation.”
As a distributor, Blue Harbor has backed the docs Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street and the upcoming The Herricanes, about a 1970s women’s full tackle football league.
Jang co-wrote King of Kings with Rob Edwards (The Princess and the Frog). Anfernee Kim (Last Knights) serves as producer. Voice and casting director Jamie Thomason (Spirited Away) and veteran filmmaking executive Andrew Mann (Gold) are executive producers.
Source: Hollywoodreporter
