One of the more intriguing film projects on the way is The Nativity Story – which is exactly what the title indicates – a film about the birth of Jesus. It’s a big-budget, regular old Hollywood (if such a place exists anymore) film directed by Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen), starring 16-year old Keisha Castle Hughes (the female lead in the marvelous Whale Rider) as Mary, and with a script written by Mike Rich, who penned Finding Forrester, The Rookie, and also happens to be a Christian.

Christianity Today sent a writer to visit the set (in the same Italian town where Pasolini and Gibson both filmed their Gospel movies) and here’s what will undoubtedly be one of many articles we’ll see on this film

Then things really sped up. Within weeks, co-producer Wyck Godfrey (Flight of the Phoenix, Daddy Day Care, I Robot)—Rich’s friend and also a Christian—was pitching the script to New Line founder Bob Shaye, who was sold right away. Shortly after that, the script ended up in Hardwicke’s hands.

She loved it and signed on, and New Line put the project on the fast track—the first major theatrical release about a biblical story from a Hollywood studio since the 1950s heyday of Bible epics (Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments, The Robe). It will open worldwide exactly one year to the day after Rich started writing—that’s light speed in the world of filmmaking.

In January, Hardwicke had a stack of scripts on her desk, and she was trying to determine what film she’d like to do next. When she spotted Rich’s script, she moved it to the top of the pile.

"The title caught my eye, so I decided to read that one first," she says. "I was amazed at how good it was. I remember thinking, This can’t be that interesting. I had read the story in the Bible so many times, and the characters were so iconic. But Mike had gotten so inside the characters: ‘What would it be like to be those people?’"

That’s exactly what Rich was aiming for.

"The nativity is usually presented as an event-board story—this happened, then this happened, then this happened," he says. "It’s rarely presented as a character story. That’s how I wanted to do it."

Here’s a review/overview of the script:

Overall, I found Nativity to be a moving drama about a young girl who confronts her destiny under the most trying of circumstances. Mike Rich’s script is respectful enough of the Gospels so as to not alarm the faithful, while also being broad enough thematically in order to appeal to a wider demographic. In other words, you shouldn’t expect Nativity to spark any Passion-ate firestorms.