U.S. director Jon Watts speaks during a press conference to promote his latest film “Spider-Man: Homecoming” in Seoul on July 3, 2017. – The movie will open in South Korea July 5. Image: Jung Yeon-Je /AFP via AFP Relaxnews
Jon Watts of “Spider-Man: Far From Home” and “Spider-Man: Homecoming” is in line to direct Michael B. Jordan in “Methuselah,” a story about a man said to have lived for 969 years.
With “Spider-Man: Far From Home” due July, its director Jon Watts looks to have landed his next project.
Talks are underway between Watts and movie studio Warner Bros over “Methuselah,” a film about the Biblical patriarch who lived longer than any other person before or since.
Discussions are at an early stage, according to Deadline, and should they prove fruitful would see Watts directing from a story most recently written up by Tony Gilroy of “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” and all four “Bourne Identity” movies.
Michael B. Jordan is set to star as the title character and his production company is also backing the film.
The “Black Panther” and “Creed” lead would play a man who has managed to accumulate a wealth of survival skills and intellectual knowledge over the course of his long life.
Methuselah pops up only a few times throughout the Bible, initially as part of the family line from Adam, the first man, down to ark-builder and flood-survivor Noah, and then in an account of the ancestors of Saul, the first king of Israel.
At a time when Biblical lifespans stretched into many hundreds of years, Methuselah outlived them all, though little else about his life was recorded.
Yet as well as being mentioned in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament, he also appears in Islam’s Stories of the Prophets.
His story usually ends at the time of the great flood, when he was survived by grandson and ark-builder Noah, recently the subject of a 2014 epic movie in which Russell Crowe was cast as its lead and Anthony Hopkins as his elderly mentor.
Jon Watts has previously been associated with two other projects, “Barn Man” and “Urban Explorers”, about which he has remained tightlipped since taking on “Spider-Man: Homecoming”. MKH
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