Another Jesus Movie?

Paul Verhoeven, director of such films as Robocop, Showgirls, and Basic Instinct, recently told Empire Magazine that he is working on a movie about “Jesus the human being”, which would try to portray his life story based solely on historical fact.

“It really goes into the politics of the time and tries to show a lot of things that have been buried and eliminated by Christianity. My scriptwriter told me not to do the movie in the United States because they might shoot me.”

Possibly more The Da Vinci Code than The Passion of the Christ? Apparently Verhoeven is a member of the Jesus Seminar , a group of scholars who are trying to unravel, with as much historical accuracy as possible, exactly what Jesus may have said or done during his lifetime.

Considering that his newest film Zwartboek (Black Book) is a serious thriller about a Jewish girl who hides out during WWII and joins a resistance movement afterwards, could it be that we’re starting to see Verhoeven’s career moving in a more mature direction?